
“When I first saw a social media post on the accident, I hoped it was a mistake or someone’s idea of a sick joke,” Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote in a Jan. 26, 2020 column, “Kobe Bryant was LA — our dreams, our sweat and the drive that unites a far-flung city.”
Lopez wrote, “For a man who devoted so much attention to the detail of his craft, it seemed incomprehensible that he would go down in a helicopter in dense fog on a day when the darkness never lifted. But he did, and the pall that spread across Southern California has traveled around the world.”
Lopez wrote that tribute five years ago this week, on the day that basketball legend Bryant, 41, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others perished in a helicopter crash above the hills of Calabasas.
Like many Angelenos, I remember where I was that foggy Sunday morning: I was running to the supermarket, and like Lopez, I also thought the news was a mistake. In fact, I first learned that Bryant had died from a text message sent by a close friend in New York. We had grown up together in LA; he still bravely sported his blue Dodgers cap on the streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. But the sense of loss in his text offered irrefutable truth that he was still LA at heart. That was the unifying power of losing Bryant: Metaphorically, losing him eventually brought all former Angelenos home.
In my weekly column for this paper shortly after Bryant’s death, I described what he meant to the many immigrants and refugees in LA, and how Lakers’ wins, including those magical three-peat wins (three consecutive NBA Championships in 2000, 2001 and 2002) offered us so much confidence — confidence we needed after having arrived in this city with very little. “In the City of Angels, only a few are chosen to fly the way Bryant soared on that basketball court,” I wrote in 2020. “He wasn’t supposed to crash and fall.”
In some ways, Bryant’s death kicked off that miserable year of 2020. Only a couple months after he died, the COVID-19 pandemic erupted worldwide, and some are still reeling from the physical and mental trauma of that dark time.
During the height of the pandemic, I often wondered how Bryant would have responded to such turmoil. I imagined him coaching Gianna, who showed impressive basketball prowess, at an outdoor court, both wearing masks. Perhaps if anyone could have contracted and beaten COVID, it would have been Bryant. In the end, it was fog that brought down one of our city’s greatest prodigies.
We could have used Bryant’s famous discipline, resilience and grit during the worst moments of the past five years, including his famous “Mamba mentality” that took the pain of excruciatingly hard work and turned it into our biggest source of strength and pride. “Mamba mentality is all about focusing on the process and trusting in the hard work when it matters most,” he once said. I even have Jewish friends who wished Bryant had been alive after Oct. 7 because he symbolized the very strength and resilience they felt they had lost.
Like that Mamba snake, the best aspect of Bryant, for me, at least, was his unrelenting pursuit of shedding one’s proverbial skin and pushing toward growth. He made some terrible choices, which left those of us who mourned him with complicated feelings.
But one of the biggest reasons why I wish Kobe had lived, besides the fact that he was a son, a husband and a father, is because the man had a growth mindset unlike any other. He had rectified his mistakes, but something told me he would never have stopped trying to make things right. As Lopez wrote in The LA Times, “I didn’t know Bryant. Few of us did. But as a father, a husband, a businessman, a person, he showed repeatedly that he was more than his darkest moments and worst instincts, that he grew, that he understood that his greatness gave him a platform to appeal to our better selves.”
And then, there was Gianna, who was only 13, but was already displaying impressive basketball skills. Bryant was a well-known “Girl Dad” and anyone who loved him on that court delighted in wondering whether his daughters would take after their father.
“I can’t believe it’s been five years. And I only wonder about all the amazing things he would have done in this world had he not been taken too soon,” Dan Grunfeld, a former pro basketball player and author of “By the Grace of the Game: The Holocaust, A Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream,” told me. “Kobe would have been an amazing ambassador for the Lakers and for the NBA in general.”
I also asked Aron Cohen, creator of the largest online community of Lakers fans (@lakersalldayeveryday) how Bryant may have responded to developments in the NBA in the last five years. “I think he [Bryant] would be a little disappointed with how soft the game has become, but he’d also appreciate how players today have drawn inspiration from him and continue to respect him through using his moves and wearing his shoes,” said Cohen. “At this point, I believe he’d be on the official Lakers staff, maybe even the president of operations.”
Bryant’s mentality inspired Cohen to create Lakers All Day Every Day. “His mentality was my favorite thing about him,” said Cohen. “He was so concentrated on being the absolute best at what he did, in everything. I would binge watch his interviews all the time, soaking up all the knowledge he had to offer.”
For Grunfeld, Bryant was “more than a basketball player. He wasn’t just an NBA All-Star or an NBA superstar. He was an icon. His incredible basketball talent amazed me and entertained me from the time I was a kid, but it was how he approached the game that made him Kobe. Discipline, hunger, determination, maniacal tenacity and work ethic.”
Basketball is a “huge part” of Cohen’s life, and Bryant was his favorite player. “It’s impossible to not feel Kobe’s absence,” he said. “But whenever I feel like I would need something from him, I can go watch a video of him speaking about the topic I was questioning. His responses are timeless. He had an answer for EVERYTHING.”
Sometimes, I struggle more with the loss of Gianna than with Kobe. She would have turned 18 this past May and would undoubtedly have started college this fall, perhaps joining the women’s basketball team. I know her doting father would have attended every game.
In truth, dear reader, writing this column reignited the same deep sadness I experienced that cold January morning in 2020. But Cohen made an observation that uplifted me: “Every Jan. 26 since then has been painful, but as the years go on, I realize how grateful I should be that I was alive at the same time as him [Bryant], getting to personally witness his greatness alive.”
Cohen is right. I and millions of others did get to live through those inimitable 20 years when Bryant displayed his magic. In fact, my children love to ask me questions about what it was like to have grown up with NBA legends such as Bryant, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal.
And I still force them to sit down and listen to me describe how Derek Fisher hit a clutch three-pointer (passed by Bryant) that forced the Lakers and the Orlando Magic into overtime during game four of the 2009 NBA finals, and then made another three-pointer to win the game. I loved watching Bryant and Fisher together.
Let me conclude with a final thought from Grunfeld, who reflected on Bryant’s role in often-glitzy Los Angeles: “In a city filled with stars, there was still only one Kobe,” he said. And we remain the still-mesmerized recipients of such greatness.
Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on X and Instagram @TabbyRefael.