LOS ANGELES _ It was December 2017, more than a year after Kobe Bryant had retired from basketball, and the Los Angeles Lakers great was expounding upon a fundamental truth of parenthood. Having spent much of his NBA career on the road, traveling from city to city, he talked about a new job, shuttling his daughters around Newport Coast.
"A lot of driving in a three-to-five mile radius," he said. "Now, to have that, it's absolutely wonderful. The time we spend in the car."
Bryant's life, which ended in a helicopter crash Sunday, might have seemed all big-time sports and celebrity from the outside, but there was something more basic at its core.
The world first knew him as the son of a former NBA player, a teenager who brought his parents along to Los Angeles when he joined the Lakers. Fans watched his whirlwind romance and marriage to Vanessa, an Orange County teenager he met on a rap video shoot.
Theirs was a romance made of such commonplace things as going to the movies and Starbucks, and him learning to play "Moonlight Sonata" on the piano for her.
But not many families must deal with immense fame and overnight wealth. Not many have their laundry aired in public, a constant fodder for headlines. So the relationships with his parents and wife had good times and bad, enduring a sexual assault charge in 2003. There were rifts and reconciliations.
In recent years, Bryant transitioned to the less-sensational role of doting father, often seen in public with his four daughters, including 13-year-old Gianna, who also died in the accident. Only a few weeks ago, former teammate Robert Horry ran into them at a youth basketball tournament.
"Kobe was just a happy guy," Horry said. "He was so excited to be there."
For all the glitz that swirled around Bryant, family was an essential part of his story.
