Saying 'Goodbye' to Kobe is Very Complicated

Kobe Bryant’s death shook me more than any other celebrity passing ever has. The suddenness of it all, of course, contributes majorly to this, but my relationship to Kobe has been a complicated one and the stages of my reckoning with his death have so far mirrored the stages of how I interacted with him in life:

Childhood Wonder

• The first thing that hit my mind when hearing the news of Kobe’s passing was flashes of KB8 sneakers (the ones that looked like a zebra) which were the first top tier pair of shoes I ever owned. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up so it was an insanely huge deal that I had these. I can see the SLAM magazine poster that hung on my wall, the one of him pulling off a reverse dunk and the photo captures the moment where his legs are tucked under him so it looks like he’s 8 feet off the ground. I remember shooting hoops for hours yelling “Kobe!” well before Dave Chappelle made it a thing. 
• See, Michael Jordan was my hero, but because I was born when he started in the NBA, I had a bit of distance from him. The tail end of his second run with the Bulls was when I started watching and by then his game had changed. Kobe was older than me by just enough that I caught the upswing of his career in full force, when I was most obsessed with basketball, he was the biggest thing going. I perceived him as below Jordan, which is to say, not a god, but the closest facsimile to it, so...pretty amazing. 

Eagle, Colorado

• I don’t know exactly what happened in that hotel room in 2003. All I know is that a young woman accused him of sexual assault, the case was dropped, Kobe publicly apologized, and settled financially with her out of court. 
• I can’t separate Kobe the player from Kobe the man like others seemingly can, and I can’t think about Kobe without thinking that at best, he cheated on his wife, and at worst, committed a truly heinous crime. 
• Around this time I was graduating from high school, I was a little more grown up, and my basketball eye had wandered to Lebron James...Kobe had diminished in terms of his importance to my life so it was a bit easier to see this issue with some balance rather than the blind loyalty of a die hard fan. 
• This happened and it doesn’t mean that I can’t read his book and learn from him about competitiveness and greatness in the pursuit of your professional ambitions, but it does mean (and it did mean) that I never looked at Kobe the same way again. 

Gianna Bryant

• Seeing the videos of Kobe and his daughter at basketball games, seeing him tutor her, and talk proudly about her wanting to carry on the Bryant basketball legacy, was incredible to watch. Kobe is the father of four daughters, I also have a daughter...Thinking about leaving her behind, or worse, perishing with her when she has so much more life to live is truly devastating. 
• There just aren’t enough words, or a combination of existing words that adequately describe what I feel, or any parent feels, when they hear about the death of Gianna, or her teammates (and their parents) in that accident. It’s something I never appreciated until I became a parent but now that this has happened, when I think of Kobe I think about his daughters and his wife and I hope that they have a support network around them that can help them get through this. 

What’s Left Behind - What Kobe Means To Me Now

• Mamba Mentality: In 2017 my wife moved to Vancouver (from Toronto) to take possession of the condo we had purchased there, it was our plan to relocate out West after all. However, an opportunity had presented itself within my workplace that had a lot of potential for me, so I spent all of 2017 living in a 224 square foot, ground floor apartment on Queen Street going in to the office 6-7 days a week, oftentimes being the first one in and last one out, devoting myself to the company, the role, and more than that, to professional development/personal excellence. I would talk to colleagues about “perfect planning and relentless execution” which is effectively what Kobe would come to describe as “Mamba Mentality”. I identified with that mentality so much so that when it came to hire for my team, we titled the job description “Mamba Mentality”. 
• Kobe’s legacy to me has little to do with how he actually performed in the NBA (again, I’m more of a Jordan worshiper/Lebron fan) and more to do with his later thoughts and commentary on the mindset and dedication required to attain, and maintain, excellence. Kobe pursued greatness with such singular focus that I can not but sit back and reflect on the efforts that I put in each day and think about whether or not they measure up to that Mamba standard. I am appreciative of the fact that he codified this and lived it as an example that I can take to heart and apply to my own life. In this one area, I believe Kobe has had a lasting impact on me. 

So, here we are. I’m still dealing with the complex mental fallout of losing a towering figure of my childhood, a disappointing figure of my young adulthood, and a source of inspiration in my pursuit of personal excellence...all wrapped up in one. 

At the end of it all, the most true thing I know about this whole Kobe Bryant tragedy is that Gianna Bryant and her two young teammates are gone too soon.