PHILADELPHIA _ So where were you? What were you doing when that sickening trickle of news started to drip, drip, drip into your mind and heart? Kobe Bryant ... dead? That can't be. Kobe is strong. Kobe is always smiling or scowling, and both faces showed how strong he was. Kobe can't die. Wasn't LeBron James just passing him for No. 3 on the NBA's all-time scoring list Saturday night at the Wells Fargo Center, then speaking with eloquence and depth about Kobe's influence and effect on him? Wasn't he on Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show, charming and smart, a proud father talking about his daughter Gianna's basketball career, just the other night? A helicopter crash? In the middle of a Sunday? And Gianna, too? What? That can't be. But there it is, first on TMZ, then one confirmation coming after another. Drip ... Kobe Bryant ... drip ... gone at 41 ... drip ... NoNoNo.
You try to make sense of something like this _ something like one of the greatest basketball players of all, one of the best to come from the Philadelphia area, Lower Merion High School, taking his talents to the NBA, to the Lakers, five championships, cutting the hearts out of the 76ers in the 2001 Finals, the controversies with Shaquille O'Neal and Phil Jackson, the sexual-assault scandal in Colorado and his shedding its stain to regain the public's respect, the life he'd led and would yet lead, all of him and it extinguished _ and there's no sense of it to make. It's barely worth trying. You sit there and it sinks in and you gape and shake your head.
So where were you? Spacing out in front of the TV with the Pro Bowl on ESPN? Cleaning the garage? Me, I was hustling home so my 8-year-old son could change and get to his 3:45 basketball game, and when we got there, I didn't notice it, but he did, and he didn't tell me about it until after the game: a player on the opposing team, wearing a green uniform tank top with a white T-shirt underneath, the word KOBE written in marker on his sleeve.
