Mamba Forever
It still is hard to process.
NBA Legend, soon to be Hall of Famer, and global icon Kobe Bryant was taken from the world in a tragic helicopter crash on Sunday, which also claimed the lives of eight others including his 13 year old daughter, Gianna. How does one process something like this?
I’m old enough to have grown up in the Jordan generation. To me, Michael Jordan was the reason that I was so in to Basketball in my youth. However in 1996, a 17 year old kid named Kobe Bryant was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets and subsequently traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Vlade Divac. I was drawn to him because we were so close in age (I was turning 16 that year), so I began to follow him because I was genuinely intrigued by the thought of someone that hypothetically could have been in my school, playing with the NBA stars that I watched on TV with regularity.
As time went on, the Lakers were slowly becoming the Bulls of the early 2000’s (or returning to the Lakers glory days, whichever you prefer) and were widely available to be viewed, especially on those old NBA on NBC triple headers that an entire generation grew up loving. Young Kobe to me was phenomenal but as a Jordan guy, I felt like he was trying too hard to be Mike. Regardless, I still watched. Still enjoyed his game, and his dynamic with Shaq. It was fun to watch.
Then Colorado happened. My opinion on Kobe changed and with the state of where the league was as is, I became uninterested in the NBA and stopped watching as much. Every now and then, I’d pop a game on to see some of these newer, younger names like LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Carmelo Anthony, but it wasn’t the same. There was no warm fuzzy feeling watching the game much anymore, and I certainly didn’t care about how the Lakers were doing because Shaq was no longer there, Phil was no longer there after deeming Kobe uncoachable, Kobe had been struggling and I still carried some disappointment in him for his part in that incident.
On one fateful night in January in 2006, I received a text message saying, “You’ve got to see what Kobe is doing to the Raptors.”
Being curious, I checked it out. It was airing on the old Fox Sports West channel that Time Warner carried at that time, or at least that’s where I remember it being on but that’s irrelevant. Kobe was going off, en route to scoring 81 points that night.
81 freaking points!
It was absurd, but looking back, it marked what I felt was the true birth of the Black Mamba. The following season, he switched from his originally assigned number of 8 to the number 24. From that point, I began to see a different Kobe Bryant. One that was not trying so hard to be the next Michael Jordan, rather, trying to be the only Kobe Bryant. His demeanor had changed and he began to relay an attitude of not caring what others thought about him or felt about his game, or his life.
This Kobe was interesting.
This Kobe became an assassin on the court.
This Kobe did not care if you liked him or hated him.
This Kobe made you respect him. He would go on to three more NBA Finals, winning two more chips to go with the three that he won as number 8. From there, an even different side of Kobe began to emerge.
Brand ambassador. He was very influential in creating the love of the game of basketball in other countries, particularly in Asia and Africa.
Mentor. Long before he was known to be having conversations and handing out advice or workouts with the current crop of younger talent, he was doing that quietly behind the scenes. LeBron James famously shared that Kobe gifted him a pair of his shoes back when LeBron was in high school and while it was a size smaller than Lebron’s shoe size (he was a 15, Kobe a 14), LeBron didn’t care and still wore the shoes to play his game in, which happened to be against Carmelo Anthony.
Family man. He and his wife Vanessa worked out their relationship from the Colorado incident and continued their family, having more children and it was as clear as day that fatherhood changed Kobe (as it usually does for most people, myself included).
I began to find myself relating to Kobe again, but in a much different perspective. I bought in to the “Mamba Mentality” so much that in 2016 as I was preparing for a brief comeback into professional wrestling, I began referring to myself as “The Mocha Mamba” JC Money in attempt to not only bring that element into pro wrestling, but use it as motivation to outperform everyone on that card. In my personal non-entertainment life, as my world began to change with a new job, a failed marriage, and life post-divorce, I kept saying to myself “Mamba Mentality” and would push forward. Working extra and doing what I had to do to survive. Truly, for me, the Mamba Mentality was my inspiration and the mindset that I was training myself to believe in.
The debates of late have been “Who is the greatest, Jordan or LeBron?”, and while I would playfully troll the majority of pollsters by picking whomever the majority did not pick in that argument (LeBron), a lot of people would drop Kobe’s name into the conversation. Kobe lovers were ride and die for #24. Kobe haters would voice their opinions, none of it I ever found malicious or anything. As with everything in sports, all in good fun. For sports fans to compare the three names to one another, big picture, says all you need to know about those three names.
Legends. Icons.
For a generation, Kobe WAS their Jordan. Much like for me, Jordan was OUR Magic. For today’s kids, LeBron is their Kobe, etc.
Post playing Kobe saw him open up his personality a little bit more again, signing with ESPN and having a show on ESPN+ called “Detail” in which he focused on studying the game of basketball on TV, and presenting it to the audience to help them understand it in a much deeper and greater detail than most had imagined. I’ve watched all of them, and I’m not saying this because he is no longer with us, but if you have the subscription, please do yourself a favor and watch the series. It is tremendous.
He also became an ambassador to Women’s Basketball, coaching a youth girls team which also had his 13 year old daughter Gianna on his team. Kobe and Gigi (as she was affectionately known as) were often seen together at games and Kobe was clearly giving her insight on the game in real time that most who play the game will never have the opportunity to have.
That’s what makes this so tragic for me. Besides the fact that Kobe Bryant was taken from us with so much more life left to live, and so much more to give to the game of basketball, his daughter Gianna was also a victim in this and lost her life before she truly began to live it. We all now have this void of wondering what could have been and the only comparison that I can make to an athlete of this magnitude leaving us in this manner, having us all feeling like we are feeling right now predated me, but Roberto Clemente and Thurman Munson immediately come to mind with this. This must have been how the sports world felt when those two were taken so young.
It is still unfathomable to me that I am speaking of Kobe Bryant the human being in the past tense. It is so terribly sad and tragic that Gianna was with him. Let us not also forget the other names that perished in this as well:
- Alyssa Altobelli: Gianna’s Teammate
- John and Keri Altobelli: Alyssa’s Parents
- Payton Chester: Gianna’s Teammate
- Sarah Chester: Payton’s Mother
- Christina Mauser: Coach
- Ara Zobayan: Pilot
To end this, ESPN Analyst and Kobe’s friend and former teammate Jay Williams said, “Hopefully everyone at home, you give that person next to you, whatever thing you have wrong in your life with them, if it’s small or big, let that shit go. None of it matters. This is about life and being precious with every damn second here.” Tomorrow is never guaranteed, and it is sad that it takes something like this to get that point out there, but time is truly precious and you just never know.
Safe home, Kobe, Gianna, Alyssa, John, Keri, Payton, Sarah, Christina, and Ara.
Mamba Forever.
-JC
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