Kobe Bryant’s NBA farewell tour was not only marked by video tributes and standing ovations and jersey swaps in the buildings where he played each night for the last time. In his unforgettable finale on April 13, 2016, hundreds of players who admired, revered and idolized him watched that game after theirs ended, requesting of locker room personnel that the Lakers-Jazz matchup be put on the big screen. “Bean!” they’d shout, watching Bryant, at age 37, put the finishing touches on one of the best careers the NBA has ever known.
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Bryant played 20 seasons, all with the Lakers, winning five championships and capturing the 2008 Most Valuable Player award. He retired at the end of the 2015-16 season as the NBA’s third all-time leading scorer, walking off the court at Staples Center having poured in 60 points against the Jazz. He was as influential a player as any to wear an NBA uniform because of all he accomplished as a player and also because of his willingness to mentor the league’s next generation of stars in a way Michael Jordan never did.
The list of players who played alongside Bryant and not only looked up to him but also counted on him for advice is significant. It includes a stable of league champions and MVPs, such as LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and Kawhi Leonard.
On Sunday, Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Southern California. He was 41. As his contemporaries and fans across the world reacted in shock and sadness, it was clear Bryant’s impact stretched far beyond those 33,643 points he scored and five Larry O’Brien trophies he hoisted.
“Just a great leader, a great person, a great champion,” Dwyane Wade said in a message posted to Instagram. “If you got a chance to know Kobe, to really know Kobe, there’s nobody better.”
“I am in shock over the tragic news of Kobe’s and Gianna’s passing,” Michael Jordan said. “Words can’t describe the pain I’m feeling. I loved Kobe — he was like a little brother to me. We used to talk often, and I will miss those conversations very much. He was a fierce competitor, one of the greats of the game and a creative force.”
Bryant shall forever be known as the “Black Mamba,” the nickname he gave himself after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” a movie in which the snake was used as a code name for an assassin. Bryant adopted the name and added “mentality” to the end of it. The “Mamba Mentality” — a killer instinct on the court, late in possessions, with the game on the line — is how he wanted to be remembered as a player. He does indeed have both numbers he wore for the Lakers — 8 and 24 — hanging from the rafters at Staples Center.
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In 1996, Bryant was an 18-year-old phenom drafted 13th overall out of Lower Merion High in suburban Philadelphia by the Charlotte Hornets, who was then traded to the Lakers for Vlade Divac. He was the jump-shooting virtuoso who also won the 1997 Slam Dunk Contest as a rookie and who teamed for eight seasons with Shaquille O’Neal, sharing the ball and three titles. They, with legendary coach Phil Jackson in the middle, were the epitome of NBA drama before there was even such a thing as Twitter. They bickered and clashed over the years as Bryant’s star grew — until the Lakers traded Shaq to Miami in 2004.
Because Kobe came into the NBA as Shaq’s teammate, and at a time when Jordan was still in the league and still winning championships, his star never quite rose to a level where his was the unquestioned face of pro basketball — the way Jordan was before him and LeBron was after.
Bryant, for years, was also viewed as a divisive player in a way Jordan was not — because the Bulls were always considered Michael’s team. Bryant fought with Shaq and could be cold to teammates and opponents, part of that “Mamba Mentality.” Bryant even publicly confirmed his desire to be traded away from the Lakers in 2007. Fortunately for him and for the franchise, a deal never materialized. He led the Lakers to titles in 2009 and 2010.
“The happy-go-lucky stuff doesn’t work, I don’t care what anybody says,” Bryant said during his final season. “You have to have somebody that’s going to create that tension … a lightning rod.”
Bryant appeared in 18 All-Star games, second-most in history, and was four times named the game’s MVP. He missed more shots (14,481) than anyone who ever played in the NBA, attempted the third-most shots in league history (26,200) and attempted the fifth-most foul shots (10,011) in NBA history. He won two league scoring titles, was named Finals MVP twice and scored his career high of 81 points on Jan. 22, 2006. It is the second-highest-scoring game in NBA history.
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“I would go 0-for-30 before I would go 0-for-9,” Bryant once said. “Oh-for-nine means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game.”
As Bryant aged, his body began to fail him. He suffered a torn Achilles tendon and underwent knee and shoulder surgeries that cost him most of the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons. It was then when he truly began to open himself up to other players, lending counsel to, among others, Irving, who FaceTimed Kobe after winning the 2016 NBA Finals and thanked him for his advice.
Just five months ago, Bryant organized an invitation-only mini-camp for “a mix of superstars and younger players on the rise.” There, he was “more coach than player, focusing on conversations and instruction while occasionally showing his techniques” on the court.
“Despite what was going on from the outside influences and what everyone else felt was best for him, (Bryant) always did what was best for his career for himself,” Irving told the Washington Post in 2018. “He figured it out. At times throughout a professional career you’re going to be tested, and there are times where you’re going to try to appease the media, you try to appease your teammates, you try to appease the coaching staff, whoever, whatever situation you are in, you try to kind of blend in. The best thing I learned from him is you don’t necessarily have to blend in. You can stand out.”
Irving was so distraught over Bryant’s death that he left Madison Square Garden instead of playing for the Brooklyn Nets against the Knicks.
Larry Nance Jr., who played on the Lakers at the end of Bryant’s career, said he “wouldn’t trade (playing with Bryant) for the world.”
“He just had so much knowledge,” Nance said. “Forget about basketball, Kobe Bryant the man was so unbelievably impressive.”
Bryant was certainly the NBA’s greatest global ambassador, generating unmatched popularity in China, the league’s largest market for customers. He was a member of the 2008 “Redeem Team” for Team USA basketball, restoring the Americans to gold-medal status after a string of disappointments on the world stage.
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After retiring, Bryant opened the Mamba Sports Academy, built specifically to mentor not only current and rising NBA stars but also children (boys and girls) wanting to grow their games. If “Mamba Mentality” and the way he played the game is his enduring legacy, his willingness to counsel so many who came after him is a sizable footnote.
“It’s cool to know that you have the support of one of the all-time greats that ever played this game and someone that you admired to be like on the floor,” LeBron once said, in what many believed was a thinly veiled comparison of the openness Kobe showed to the greats who followed him with what came from Jordan.
If Bryant truly followed Jordan as the face of the NBA — and again, that’s debatable, in no small part because of O’Neal — then it was LeBron who followed Kobe. The two played in the NBA for 13 seasons together, and one of them appeared in every Finals from 2007 to 2018, but never against each other. They were teammates on Team USA, and it was LeBron (and then Steph Curry and Irving and James Harden, to name a few) who followed Bryant into China as ambassadors not only for the NBA but also for shoe companies Nike, Under Armor and Adidas.
The timing of Bryant’s death, not 24 hours after James passed him for third on the league’s all-time scoring list, is surreal. James didn’t make an immediate public comment Sunday, but he said this Saturday night after eclipsing Bryant on the all-time scoring list: “You don’t have that much time to play this game. If you’re able to be remembered for the great things that you did, the positive things that you did, making people feel great about what you did, that’s a pretty cool thing. I wrote on my shoes tonight, I think I put ‘Mamba for life, 8, 24 KB,’ because it’s really that mutual.
“The first time I ever met him, gave me his shoes on All-Star weekend. It’s surreal. It doesn’t make no sense, but the universe just puts things in your life. And I guess when you live in the right way, when you just give it everything to whatever you’re doing, things happen organically. And it’s not supposed to make sense but it just happens. And I’m happy just to be in any conversation with Kobe Bean Bryant, one of the all-time greatest basketball players to ever play, one of the all-time greatest Lakers. The man has two jerseys hanging up in Staples Center. It’s just crazy.”
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(Photo: Harry How / Getty Images)
