By Nikos Varlas/ varlas@eurohoops.net
They say time is the only, the best healer to heal the deeper wounds. It’s almost always like that. But there are exceptions. More or less, we all heard about Kobe’s death at the same time.
I don’t remember ever feeling like this about news that had a direct or indirect connection to sports. I can’t remember any other “stories” that we didn’t want to publish. We waited until the last moment, with a slight, hidden hope that it was not true.
That it was fake news. As soon as it was confirmed, our capacity as journalists collapsed like a paper tower. Just like our emotions.
Shock, awe, such a strong refusal to accept the facts but, at the same time, so weak and frail, while the “news fever” was developing, as every second that passed, excruciatingly, you realized that, that which simply CANNOT be true has actually happened.
Time passed, it was now in the history books. Nine people met a horrible end, killed in a helicopter crash.
Among them, Kobe.
And also – why God? – Gianna
The daughter he adored, Mambacita, whom biology determined to make the same as him, her father. To share the same features, those fiery eyes, that smile, the Mamba mentality, the pure basketball talent.
From the unbearable moment I found out about Gianna, my grief reached a different dimension.
From that moment until now, as I try to capture some thoughts and emotions about an event that makes me feel inadequate, microscopic, helpless, a painful and completely unusual process develops within me.
Time has stopped. I feel completely lost. This is how zombies must feel.
My soul is in great pain and my mind is blocked.
And it’s locked on a moment that we can only imagine – can we, really? – but which we know has taken place.
I’m talking about those final seconds when the helicopter was out of control and plunging into death.
They say that such moments might not last long but that they seem like a century for those who are there, who experience them.
They say your whole life goes by in front of you. Like a movie.
I’m trying to see it from Kobe’s perspective.
You realize that you are about to die and you have next to you what you have loved the most truly, what you have adored the most in your life.
The daughter through whom you saw yourself, the one who, as bold as you ever was, looked you in the eyes and said: “Dad, don’t be disappointed you didn’t have a boy. I’ll continue your legacy. I got this!”
Now you’re looking her in the eyes. It’s one of your own, favorite mornings, where the two of you go out to do what you love.
Play basketball.
But, finally, you won’t have any fun. Not today.
You will die together and you can’t do what you were made to do. Protect her and give her the life you and she dreamt of.
Maybe you don’t have enough time to think about yourself and everything you will not live for. The instinct of a father suggests only one objective. That your little girl makes it through.
One thought, one fucking image repeated again and again in my head, lasting a few moments. Then, a void.
Then a grief that spreads like a toxin everywhere inside your body and eats you up.
And repeat.
An uncontrollable, obsessive sadness that is repeated inside your mind, again and again. I cannot think of anything else, I cannot clear my head and process this as a fact, so that I can enter the stage of acceptance.
There is no acceptance.
I think of those final moments. The father next to his little girl. The little girl next to her father.
I think about their looks, I wonder what the last words they managed to exchange might have been.
Time is running out…
5, 4, 3, 2, 1…
Boom.
It’s not one of those buzzers that Kobe made look routine.
It’s the thread of life being cut.
“When Gianna was born it felt so intense… I promised her that I’d never let her go.”
That’s Kobe’s statement.
Damn it, it all came crushing down in a matter of seconds. Kobe had proven that he always kept his word.
I’m sure he kept that PROMISE (embrace).
It wasn’t like he had dreamt it would be.
But it was the LAST thing he ever did.
He held his Gianna in his arms and he never let go.
He was there when she was born.
He was there, beside her, as they departed together.
They wanted to fly somewhere to play basketball. Fate decided they would never land. Fate, in its most unpredictable and relentless manifestation, decided to crush them, to bound them hand in hand so that they could be lost in the sky forever.
To become angels, on a hill, some 40 kilometers away from the City of Angels. The city he loved and that loved him like no other star.
His promise was to become a tragic destiny.
Now, we feel that the incredibly strong love that united them from the first to the last moment, those embraces, those looks we saw and smiled at these past few years, was not the standard and pure love between father and daughter.
It was something metaphysical.
It was destiny.
A history, like an ancient Greek tragedy.
A script that Kobe himself could have written.
After all, he did win the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, in his first attempt.
That’s when he said that the feeling was better, stronger than the feeling he had when he won his championships.
And when he was asked how he had decided to start his own company, to go into his own studio and become a storyteller, he responded: “I was anxious, it was something I hadn’t done before, I didn’t know anything. One day we sat at home and we all discussed it. It was like a family meeting. My daughter, Gianna, was the one who gave me the strength. She told me, ‘Dad, aren’t you always telling us to pick our dreams and then do everything to make them come true?’ Come on, you’ll do this too. Get started, make it happen.”
If this is not destiny, if this is not karma, then what is?
If Kobe could punish you on the court, then whoever came up with the scenario for this departure has a far greater capacity for punishment.
And we all know very well what Kobe meant for basketball, and what basketball meant for Kobe.
A lifelong relationship that inspired millions of people across the globe, in every corner.
On Saturday night, LeBron surpassed him in points. He honored him on the shoes he wore.
KOBE 4 LIFE, they read.
Kobe returned the honor, like all the greats should.
With his last post, his last public statement.
“Continuing to move the game forward King James. Much respect, my brother.”
That’s what he wrote.
A few hours later one of the most brutal, most barbaric and cruel family tragedies in the history of sports was written.
LeBron surpasses Kobe, Kobe tips his hat, bows, and a few hours later he’s gone.
Along with 8 other people.
In an embrace with his love, Gianna.
Now, are we supposed to believe that this isn’t a nightmare?
We have to accept that it really happened?
But how ruthless can the eternal writer of his destiny be?
We will never be able to fathom it. It will hurt forever.
One of those hundreds of millions who CANNOT accept it is Giannis.
Kobe embraced him too from early on.
From 2016, he began to boost him with respect, with faith in his talent, and to… push him towards history, like only he knew.
Kobe’s tweet publicly challenging him to become the MVP has been the most precious “propellant” in Antetokounmpo’s career so far, following his father Charles’ also unexpected passing.
Giannis responded. He turned Kobe’s prophecy-challenge into reality.
First in his soul and in his mind and then in a screenshot on his phone, he kept the great’s reaction when he won the award.
“My man… MVP greatness. Next up: Championship.”
It’s not just that. It’s the advice he had been giving him for so long, in private conversations. He developed into a spiritual mentor, for Giannis first of all, but also in regards to basketball.
Giannis might have the whole world at his feet now, but he’s a deeply conscientious and emotional person.
He’s expecting his first kid, his baby boy, in a month.
At the fore in his soul, the excited anticipation. The joy.
At the back, subconsciously, the sadness.
“My man, you should know and you should never forget that it’s a huge blessing for parents to be able to meet their grandchildren,” he told me on last Thursday night.
Because I know Giannis, I understood very well what he wasn’t telling me.
How much it hurts, in the midst of his joy, that his father, Charles, will never get to meet his little grandson.
Now, he has lost his mentor, the man who knew how to push him forward so that he could be able to move mountains. And he knows that the Kobe he loved won’t get to meet any grandkids either.
I believe that when he found out, Giannis not only didn’t have the courage to make any public statements, he couldn’t even look at the news. That’s why he shut everything down.
Whether you’re Giannis, or LeBron, whom we saw crying, or me, or you, or the last person on earth, it doesn’t matter.
There’s no difference.
I feel that this event has caused an emotional collapse in everyone.
Is time really the best healer?
That night was painful. One of the worst ever.
I woke up feeling much worse, unable to explain why.
I feel awful. Inexpressible sadness. Absolute emptiness.
The absolute WHY?
You usually cry and let it all out.
Now you just cry and cry and cry.
Either out loud or silently.
This recurring obsessive sadness and thought process keeps overtaking me.
It has crushed me.
I know. How many tragedies are happening all around us? Countless.
So many people lose their lives unjustly.
Next to us, near us, far from us.
We usually get involved as partakers of grief for a while and then we move on.
Why not for so many others? Don’t they have a soul?
They do. Just like the other six people that were on the helicopter that shot us all down.
But I think I know why it feels so immense with Kobe.
Because it’s one of the few times that, even though it’s an indescribable tragedy that doesn’t take place inside our own homes, we can nevertheless PICTURE it so easily.
We can recreate those last scenes in our minds, see him, imagine him, because that’s how deeply he and his Mamba Mentality have been engraved in our minds and in our hearts.
We grew up with Kobe.
We admired his talent, the way he thinks, his unique personality.
We stared with a sweet smile at all those sweet and human posts of him with his little girl, Gianna.
Who was like a photocopy of him, outside and in.
That’s why we’re so inconsolable. That’s why we’re all hurting so much.
Because this time, a MYTH, but also a man, a husband, a son and a great dad perished in the most tragic way, and we can PICTURE everything that happened.
Just like we can go back in time in our minds and our memories, and know so well who Kobe was. And how he was gone.
As I process it and look for answers, I realize that the reason we are shocked and cannot recover is that this TRAGEDY is the DEFINITION of human futility.
Forget about Kobe as a player and as a personality (not possible).
Picture only the MAN.
The FATHER.
The strongest, toughest competitor, the man with the MACHINE-LIKE body and mind, the one with the greatest CONFIDENCE.
The one whose look would take your breath away on the court and whose smile would pull you in off of it.
The guy who, even though he already had had a career like a fairytale, you were sure would be able to achieve and create even bigger things after basketball.
To inspire even more people.
THE UNBEATABLE.
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE.
He DIED in the most horrible way the human mind can possibly imagine.
He became ashes, he went up in smoke, in an embrace with his beloved young daughter, who only wanted to play basketball on a Sunday morning as her dad-mentor watched on.
There are no answers. There are no words. There is nothing.
THE ABSOLUTE PAIN.
THE ABSOLUTE FUTILITY.
THE ABSOLUTE PROOF that we are ALL small, just passing through.
ABSOLUTELY MORTAL.
We are nothing, we know nothing.
We will never know the day on which we will die.
So, let us live the gift of life, together with our loved ones and let us fight for our dreams like it’s our last day.
Isn’t that what Kobe always said?
41 years of life, with a message that is even bigger than his Legacy, which he taught by actions and which he repeated in all his great moments.
“Live every day like it’s your last and never miss the time or the opportunity to give a hug to those you love.”
Kobe, we understood it, even though we forgot, as we were the glum, small, disoriented people of everyday life.
You taught us, you conveyed your message like no other.
You didn’t HAVE to DIE LIKE THAT, my dear Kobe, in order to SCREAM your message one last time, so EMPHATICALLY.
We needed you here, because very few are like you were.
To be great. To make history.
To be proud of your young daughter as you watched her grow. So that sweet being could live her life too and wink at you every time the legacy of your name grew even greater.
Never mind us. At the end of the day, not all of us deserved you. You were a gift and an idol, generous and free.
Your wife, Vanessa NEEDED you. As did your three daughters.
Thankfully they didn’t get on that helicopter.
All of us, we say thankfully.
I am scared and I shudder at the thought that, now that they are crying their hearts out, perhaps they feel it as another misfortune. That they weren’t on the helicopter, next to you and Gianna. How will they cope and how will they live and keep going with this pain?
Why Kobe?
Why God?
THE ABSOLUTE PAIN.
THE ABSOLUTE FUTILITY.
THE ABSOLUTE PROOF that we are ALL small, just passing through.
ABSOLUTELY MORTAL.
Us.
Not you.
You wanted, you said, to become a better storyteller than a basketball player.
Well, you did it. And you didn’t need a lot of time either…
You were born, you lived and you passed in a way that was totally Kobe.
Ultimately, your story, with its beginning, its outcome and its END, will be recounted FOREVER.
It will be taught and heard until the last living human being remains on this planet.
It will NEVER be forgotten.
You did it again.
With the story you gave birth to and the ending you “came up with,” my man, you will defeat even the most INVINCIBLE. The all-powerful.
Time.
You found the way. Your human dimension is gone, HOWEVER, your life story won the Oscar of Eternity.
Goodbye Kobe, now we will love you even more.