LOS ANGELES — Five years.
Somehow, with all that has happened between that awful moment and now, it remains surreal and hard to believe that it was five years ago today that Kobe Bean Bryant, along with his daughter Gianna and seven others, died in a helicopter crash.
It was a Sunday when the news, the horror, began to spread.
The cliches aside, it is hard to properly understand and explain what Bryant meant to this place. Losing him, at age 41, was more than a shock. It was as if some integral part of L.A. had been ripped away, that some feeling of Southern California had simply vanished.
It was also how a man who inspired something specific here — hope, success, perseverance, ambition, success, greatness, all rolled into a singular feeling about Los Angeles — instantly became a mark of sadness, of life’s unfairness, and of how, even on a pleasant and foggy L.A. morning, nothing is promised.
If that is dark, and awful, then so was Bryant’s death, and how he, more than almost any celebrity, felt a part of L.A., rather than an inhabitant of it. To lose him, to know his daughter had died with him, it was all too much to believe, even as the news trickled in that day five years ago. Even today, it’s hard to get your mind around.
Most people here, including me, didn’t know Kobe Bryant. But they knew perfectly well what he meant to Los Angeles.
I moved here in 2013, and, despite having been around the Lakers star professionally and having interviewed him before, it was then that I started to actually understand him, through the prism and context of the city.
One of my earliest memories of being a Los Angeleno was, a few days in, driving through L.A.’s famous indomitable traffic to get my California driver’s license. I found the nondescript DMV building, parked my car, walked in — and stopped in my tracks.
The place was a shrine to Kobe — while he was still playing, years before his death. His face was everywhere, purple and gold draped across everything, posters and printouts, Kobe cutouts and all the other detritus of sports fans filling the government office. I joked later with friends that I’d gotten my driver’s license at a Kobe museum. It would take a while longer to realize that much of L.A. was just that: a reflection of Kobe, just as Kobe had become a reflection of Los Angeles.
Many, many people make their way to Los Angeles to make it: Dreamers and strivers, losers and winners, stars and those who don’t in the end shine bright enough, chasing their ambitions and hopes and the belief that in L.A. another life awaits you if you can just work hard enough and get lucky enough to grab it and not let go.
But very few of those who come here break through. Even for those who do make it, it’s a small handful who actually become a part of L.A. itself — as much a part of this place as Beverly Hills or the beach, the Hollywood sign and the studios, the idea of fame and the way it’s actually lived amongst the rest of us here, day in and day out, in the unending sunshine.
But Kobe was. He transcended being a star here to being a part of the place that makes them.
It’s hard to explain, other than to say, when he died, something that felt forever about Los Angeles seemed to go with him.
Yet his connection never wavered. The way people love him here — truly and deeply — still holds, today. There are more than 100 murals around the world of Kobe, and more than 20 here in L.A., including near my home that, every time I drive by, dredges back up how we all feel today.
My first memory of being a part of this place spoke to Kobe’s connection to it.
And then there’s my last memory of Kobe himself.
I was at a Lakers game, a few weeks before he died, in a VIP area where celebrities and movers and shakers ate sushi, sipped tequila and chatted in the company of Jeanie Buss, Rob Pelinka and other Lakers executives.
That day, sitting on a couch, a buzz rippled through the place — rare, there, since it sometimes felt like every other person was a big-time name. I looked up, and there stood Kobe Bryant, having just walked in with his daughter, Gianna.
People rushed over to say hi, get photos, catch up. I’m a dad of a daughter, too, and know what it looks like when you just want to spend time with her, that daddy-time vibe a father will understand. So I left him alone, passing on the tractor-beam like feeling when you were near him to walk up and try to get closer.
But I will never forget, in that room and then later a couple rows behind Kobe at the game, watching him and Gianna as they sat in their floor seats, laughing and joking. You could just tell how much he loved her, even as, every time they put Kobe on the big screen, or someone walked by him to get to their own floor seats, or a player glanced his way during the game, how much all of L.A. seemed to love him.
So weeks later, when the news came that Kobe Bryant had died, I found myself hoping the 13-year-old daughter I’d watched him with that night had not been there.
If Kobe had to be gone, I thought, please let Gianna at least be OK.
She had been there, of course, alongside her dad, one of the nine victims of a moment that, even five years ago today, is hard to properly process.
But there is this, in the darkness and sadness of it all: My last memory of Kobe is one dad seeing in another how much he loved his daughter. That seems an appropriate touchstone to what all of us here in L.A. feel in his absence after all these years.
That in L.A. we remember how we saw parts of ourselves in him, and even in how devastated that makes us feel, it also reminds so many why they loved Kobe Bryant so much, and how, five years later, he is still a real part of this place he came to help define.
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