MIAMI — The show must go on, it must always go on, in every precinct outside of Los Angeles, but the Kobe Bryant Story is a tragedy that has washed ashore on South Beach, a tsunami of a grief that can be seen and heard even over the pulsating music from the ostentatious party the NFL is committed to throwing annually come hell or high water.
The relentless drumbeat of hype of Super Bowl Week cannot stop the mourning, and it isn’t only because Kobe Bryant was a generational basketball icon, the Black Mamba whose on-court mentality was admired, copied and adopted by athletes in all sports.
It is also because he was a husband and a father, and he leaves behind a wife and three of his four young daughters. His 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was killed with him in Calabasas, Calif. on that helicopter, on their way to her travel basketball game.
The sorrow cannot possibly be contained between Lower Merion, Pa., where it all began for Kobe, and L.A., where No. 24 became a five-time champion who lit up the City of Angels that decided to go dark and postpone Tuesday night’s Lakers-Clippers game.
Monday mourning everywhere across America and even beyond for a global icon with an otherworldly gift.
There was a moment of silence at Super Bowl Opening Night when a photo of Kobe 1978-2020 flashed on the big overhead screen. “Ko-be, Ko-be, Ko-be,” the fans chanted.
Kobe impacted Richard Sherman both on the field and off it.
“There’s a certain killer instinct you gotta have to win at a high level and to win when nobody expects you to win … there’s a certain mentality you have to have when you never take no for an answer and that’s no from anybody, whether it’s the weather, whether it’s your own body, whether it’s your opponent,” Sherman said. “He showed me that there is mind over matter.You can overcome anything if you put your mind to it.”
So many wanted to Be Like Kobe after they wanted to Be Like Mike.
“He had a big impact on all of us,” Chiefs punter Dustin Colquitt said. “He’s 41, I’m 37. That was somebody that you watched, you wanted to emulate everything he did. … I have a daughter, she’s 9, when you see some tragedy like that, it’s hard to know kinda what was going through his mind. She [Gianna] had her whole life in front of her.”
It is more than likely that none of the men playing in Super Bowl 2020 can or ever will approach Kobe Bryant’s Hall of Fame greatness, but all of them have families, and all of them have been reminded that all of it, and all the fame and the fortune and the camaraderie and the unbridled joy, it can all be taken from you in an instant, one maddeningly cruel instant, one horrific, unspeakable twist of fate.
And so of course a pall was cast on Super Bowl Opening Night at Marlins Park, a pall that will last all the way to Super Bowl 2020 on Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium, when these Chiefs and 49ers play in a game they have dreamed of playing since they were little boys.
“Kobe was such a big inspiration, especially where I’m from — a black kid from a very small city, [Lauderhill, Fla.]” Tyreek Hill said. “I remember going outside every day, counting down the shot clock, saying, ‘5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Kobe.’ I still don’t want to believe it. It’s sad, man.”
Frank Clark considered Kobe a brother from afar.
“Growing up in Los Angeles, inner city, South Central, you don’t got a lot to look forward to,” Clark said. “There are gangs and drugs. That’s really it. The one person I looked to for inspiration and all my strength growing up when I was going through the things I was going through was Kobe Bryant. He was a successful guy. You look at gangs, drug dealers and you look at the guys who are successful. The athletes…. He was winning championships with Big Shaq in the early 2000s and L.A. was on fire, baby.”
Patrick Mahomes is 24 years young and he is the baby face of Super Bowl 2020 and if there is anyone Kobe would have wanted to watch on Sunday, it is Mahomes, who can do things with a football that Kobe could do with a basketball.
“The work ethic and the intensity that he had to be great every single day, and then, even to this day, I still watch videos on YouTube day before games and just listen to him talk and how he puts everything in perspective of being great on and off the field with his kids and his business ventures and then obviously his play. … He made a huge impact on my life for sure,” Mahomes said.
Some of their brothers have succumbed to CTE. All of them expect to live past 41.
They know now that Kobe Bryant will not.
“Seeing things like that makes me not understand life,” Hill said. “Those kids had to die in such a tragic way. I feel like I lost a family member. I don’t know even Kobe like that. He’s just a role model to me and then his kids … I have a daughter myself so I can only imagine.”
This won’t be Super Bowl 2020 as much as it will be Super Bowl 2424.
“I thought guys like him lived forever,” Tyrann Mathieu said.
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