Obituaries for the NBA great rolled in the hours after his death, most focusing on the easiest-to-understand parts of the story
Nine people were on the helicopter that crashed outside the wealthy enclave of Calabasas,
California, on Monday. The wreckage of the aircraft scattered across an area the size of a football field, and a day later the LA coroner’s office was still gathering remains from the site. The helicopter had reportedly taken off in dense fog en route to a girls’
basketball tournament in nearby Thousand Oaks, California, where some of the passengers were set to compete: among those on board was 13-year-old Gianna Bryant, an aspiring basketball player. The helicopter belonged to her father, the basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, who was also on board, and reportedly it was decked out like a limousine, with a cavernous interior and soft leather seats. There were no survivors.
The death of Kobe Bryant has shocked sports fans and observers in part because he seemed like the sort of person who could never die. On the court, he moved with an uncommon skillfulness and grace, moving the ball from his opponents’ reach with the alacrity and sleight of hand of a magician, leaping into the air with the elegant reach of a ballerina. Though he had a thin jaw and hollow cheeks, his face had something boyish about it. Maybe it was because he had rocketed to fame as a teenager, recruited to the NBA straight out of high school. Or maybe it was the dimple that appeared when he smiled, which he did often and easily. With his alarming physical skill and his aura of joyfulness and minor arrogance, he seemed to possess a permanent and transcendent youthfulness, as if he was always going to be a teenager. In reality, he was old for an athlete when he retired in 2016. He died at 41.