On Jan. 26, 2020, I was in a car in east Wichita, hanging out with friends when I got a phone call from my mother. The first thing she said was “Kobe.” 

I was confused. Then she said, “Kobe died.” In that moment, the world stopped. I couldn’t believe it. 

That was the impact he had. You didn’t even have to know or meet him.

 As soon as I got off the phone with her, I checked everything. My first move was to look to the Internet. I saw that it wasn’t just him, it was one of his daughters. Later on I found out that his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna Bryant, died in the fatal plane accident, along with seven other people.

Now, to be clear, nine people died in that accident, and their lives are not any less important. They had brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, parents and so on. They left people behind, and Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester, Giannia’s teammates, likely would have gone to the WNBA as well. 

However, I focus on Kobe and Gianna because that’s who I knew. 

Kobe was one of the best to ever play the game of basketball. Every game he played, you could see his passion for basketball. He wanted to be the best. I mean he asked former basketball player, and Hall of Famer Michael Jordan for basketball tips, while he was playing against him. Who does that? He played with a dislocated finger, shot free throws on a torn achilles and walked off the court by himself nonchalantly. 

Seeing Kobe play in person was a dream for my mom and I. We were in LA and at the Staples Center. It was Kobe’s final year of basketball, and at the last minute, we decided that maybe we could get some tickets to his game. 

It turns out that they only had one ticket left. We decided that we would watch the game at the hotel as a family. So I never got to see the Mamba on the court. 

But Kobe was so much more than the game he played. He was more than an athlete. His Mamba mentality transcended other avenues of his life.  It even influenced people in other sports. He was the first one in the gym, and the last one to leave. No one worked harder than the Mamba. 

He made you want to be the best at whatever you did. 

He also was a girl dad. Seeing him work with Gianna, and knowing how great of a player she was going to be, was amazing. There’s no doubt she could have been better than the G.O.A.T of the WNBA, Diana Taurasi. Because of him, my dad now calls himself a girl dad. 

Kobe was great. It’s hard to imagine a celebrity who influenced the world so much and now he’s gone.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that they aren’t immortal. Somehow I thought Kobe could have found some way to survive that crash. 

But in reality, he was human, just like you and me.  Another life — their lives — gone too soon.

8/24 “Mamba Out.”