Kobe Bryant, basketball legend, Oscar winner, father, husband, must-watch, eyes-glued-to-the-TV spectacle for 20 years tragically passed away with his 13-year-old daughter and seven others in a freak helicopter accident on Sunday morning. It’s Monday now and I’m not sure it’s really sunk in.
I played basketball almost obsessively once I discovered the sport in my late teens right up until my injury. I wore his shoes. I must have watched tens, maybe hundreds of hours of Kobe Bryant footage; pausing, re-watching in slow motion particular pieces of footwork or decision-making before running outside to attempt to emulate them for hours in my driveway or at the gym. It’s an experience I’m sure I share with thousands of people who grew up with Kobe being the face of basketball across the globe. Even now when attempting a crazy shot or throwing a balled up piece of paper into an open bin, people will still invoke his name: “Kobe!” – he embodied attempting the difficult (or seemingly impossible) fearlessly and somehow coming out on top. That’s what makes his passing all the more surreal.
I don’t think I was just copying his techniques when I was out practising on my driveway late at night; I think, consciously or passively, I was also absorbing his attitude. In a way it was impossible not to; it seeped into everything about him, whether it was basketball, his relationships, his media presence, his family or his creative endeavours: he was a force of nature. He was an icon of perfection and perfectionism. There are many stories that have emerged detailing Kobe’s incredible- bordering on psychotic- work ethic and attention to detail; he would routinely be at the gym hours before his teammates and breaking his right hand just led to him practising with his left instead, without skipping a beat. He refused to let adverse circumstances break him down. Even after an Achilles injury that many said would end his career, he came back. There are countless interviews detailing Kobe’s obsessive commitment to his craft and his will to win is on full display in not only his historic basketball career, but every aspect of his life. Some of his resilience, some of his ability to grab life by the horns I really absorbed as I grew into a man; and I was just some boy growing up in the rural Midlands of England. His influence truly knew no borders. Even though I know longer can play basketball, I still find myself listening to his interviews or appearances on podcasts; he had grown into so much more than just a world-class athlete.
It’s been reported that he was taking his daughter Gigi to basketball practice when the accident happened. I think that says all that needs to be said about his commitment to his family and his greatness as a father.
You’re just trying to create the best thing you possibly can… There’s no need to be nervous, things are what they are, it’s out of your hands, you did the best job that you could possibly do, and you go from there.
Kobe Bryant, on winning an Oscar and his creative pursuits outside of basketball
Things like this hit me in a different way since my injury. Before, it was much easier to tell myself “That would never happen to me”. It was not difficult to push tragedy so far out of my mind; I was young, I was invincible and things like that only ever happened to other people, right? Sadly, wrong. How precious and fleeting our lives are and how tenuous our grip upon them. Sometimes life just has other plans for you; and sometimes those plans are savage, unwavering, cruel and unfair. Now I know a little bit about drawing a bad hand and that just makes me hurt all the more when things like this happen; I can no longer hide behind my ignorance and push these things out of my mind.
I think about all of the sadness and loss that my story has and how much damage it has done, how much weight there is to carry, how hard it has been; and that can’t compare to the pain the victim’s families will have to bear from this moment on. My thoughts are with them. Yes, I have had to mourn the life I had wanted to lead, there are no words for how sad that has been, but at least I have been given the opportunity to carry on.
I am often plagued by thoughts about how my life has been shortened by my injury. My new life expectancy has been a subject of great scrutiny because of its ramifications for my compensation; experts have been paid large sums to examine in great depth how many years I may have lost. The legal reasons for this I won’t get into here, but I’ll tell you that the expert opinion is not good. All of my years dedicated to achieving the upper percentiles of physical fitness, my sub-50 resting heart rate, my hours in the gym or at the pool- all washed away, erased like the tide smooths the sand.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and grab my old self by the shoulders, and shake him, saying “Don’t you know how little time you have left? You can only feel her hand in yours a few more times, you’re not going to be able to stand and walk and breathe the evening air for that much longer. Why don’t you savour what you have?”. But this tragedy has reminded me that you can’t get lost in the numbers, the future, or the past; you can only live with what you have right now. So go and call your parents, hug your children, kiss your partner. Savour the texture of their hand in yours, the sound of their voice, the look in their eyes. You don’t know how much time you have left.
To Kobe I say thank you. You showed a boy in the middle of nowhere a little bit of what excellence looks like, of what it means to be a competitor, of how to hold yourself when the chips are down, of how to be a winner even when the odds are against you. It’s a tragedy you passed so early; you did so much while you were here.
Rest in peace to all nine victims. Thoughts and prayers to their families.
A beautiful tribute to someone who clearly inspired you in so many different aspects of your life. Your grandparents always encouraged your Dad and I to make the most of every day and set that example to us with how they lived. Steve Hogarth wrote a song called The Leavers about the crew (and the fans) back in 2016 and I take this line as my mantra “Life’s too short for standing still” . I was on tour at the time of your accident and every night that he sang this I sang it back as loud as I could, in spite of feeling guilt that I should be making the most of the trip away when such terrible things were happening back home… but I remembered all that Grandma had said to me in those last few weeks, just a few weeks before, and I knew she was right. You so have both their spirits and as I said before, they would be so very proud of you.