Kobe Bryant

Last Sunday I had a basketball game with my team, the BCH Tigers. The game was in a small locality in the south of Hamburg called Hausbruch. Tipoff was supposed to be at 3:30 p.m., but when my team got to the gymnasium, a match between two young girls teams was still in progress on the court. This meant that my teammates and our opponents would have to warm up on an adjacent court. Both courts were separated by a partition that ran from the gymnasium floor to the ceiling, so we couldn’t see the girls game as we warmed up, but, I tell you, we sure could hear it. The game had gone into overtime, and the other guys and I were amazed at how many squeals and shouts kept coming through that partition.

Hearing those outbursts of excitement, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Kobe Bryant’s daughter and her basketball team. Over the last few months, I have stayed abreast of Gianna’s progress through comments that Kobe has made in the media as well as his Instagram posts.

Eventually, my team took to the court—and got whipped by our opponents. They were just more skilled and disciplined than we were, and the loss showed us just how much we still have to learn. Still, there were a few bright spots to the game. One was when I was guarding a player who was better than me and I didn’t “lose my feet,” meaning I didn’t jump prematurely. My actions ultimately forced my opponent to pass the ball. Another bright spot was after the game when some of my teammates, a girlfriend of one of them, and my girlfriend, Martina, all played a spontaneous and hilarious round of Knockout.

At around 6:30 p.m., I said goodbye to my teammates and left the gymnasium.  On the drive home, Martina and I sorta got lost. For some reason, the navigation system told us to get off the highway, which wound up being a bad idea because Martina and I then had to spend a good amount of time driving around, like, the badlands of the Hamburg shipyards before finding a route we recognized.

I must say that it is now surreal to think that at some point during this car ride home, Kobe Bryant and Gianna were killed in a horrific helicopter accident in California.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about what the loss of Kobe Bryant means to me. What I will say is that in my little world, in my little universe, I feel a modicum of peace knowing that on the last day of Kobe’s life, I was doing something that he loved.

Yes, Kobe was the basketball star of my generation, but I wasn’t really into basketball when he was playing. The last three years, however, are a different story. Over the last three years, I have gotten heavily into basketball and have come to love Kobe. In addition to what he achieved on the court, his enthusiasm for his new roles in life, after retirement, was infectious, and especially touching, I thought, was his involvement with Gianna and her basketball team. Just the other day, actually, I marveled at one of Kobe’s Instagram posts showing Gianna shooting a fadeaway.

Really, I can’t think of anything else to end this post with but a thank you. Thank you, Kobe, for your contribution to basketball. Thank you for challenging us to be greater than we ever thought we could be, even if we sometimes fail in the process. Thank you for your hunger, your passion, your creativity and your good heart.

Though I never knew you, I will miss you.