38 Time February 10, 2020
West, then executive vice president of
the Los Angeles Lakers and one of the
best players in NBA history, less than a
half hour to know the answer. As part of
a workout ahead of the 1996 draft, Bry-
ant played one-on-one against the re-
cently retired defensive specialist Mi-
chael Cooper. The GM ended the session
early. “I was embarrassed for Michael to
watch a 17-year-old just basically demol-
ish him,” West tells TIME, “and enjoy
doing it.”
West acquired Bryant in a draft-
day deal, pairing the teenager with the
towering Shaquille O’Neal and launching
one of the most decorated careers in
professional sports. Over 20 seasons—
all of them with the Lakers—Bryant
won five NBA championships, two
scoring titles, a pair of Olympic gold
medals, one MVP award and was named
to 18 All-Star teams. More than merely
guarding Jordan, Bryant emerged as
his heir, a scoring assassin who could
rip a defender’s heart out by way of a
devastating dunk or an elusive fadeaway
jump shot from the baseline, his singular
work of athletic art. His ascent coincided
with the development of social media
and basketball’s embrace around the
world, which turned Bryant into one of
the game’s first truly global stars. Back
home, he inspired a generation of high
school phenoms like LeBron James
to follow his lead from high school to
the NBA.
“You said Kobe, and everyone knows
who that is: a one-word name,” says
Quentin Richardson, who played against
Bryant in the 2000s.
Driven by a focus and intensity that
he would come to call—and trademark—
Mamba Mentality, Bryant had the rare
combination of elite talent and preter-
natural fire seen only in the true greats.
“Kobe played the game,” says West, “like
it was war.”
When Bryant retired in 2016, he had
scored 33,643 points, good for fourth on
the NBA all-time scoring list. He was in
third until Jan. 25, when James passed
him. Bryant called James and sent a con-
gratulatory tweet.
The next day, Bryant was gone. The
helicopter he was taking to his daugh-
ter’s youth-basketball tournament
crashed in the hills near Calabasas, Calif.
All nine people on board were killed,
including Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter
Gianna, known as Gigi, and two other
young girls. Bryant had begun using he-
licopters as a player to avoid L.A. traf-
fic on his commutes to home games,
and to give him more time with his wife
Vanessa and their children. The crash
is still under investigation, though the
National Transportation Safety Board
said the helicopter was not equipped
with a terrain-warning system that
could have alerted the pilot to danger.
The loss was one of the most stun-
ning in the history of sports and global
celebrity that Bryant had done so much
to fuse. To many, it was as if a vein had
been opened. NBA players wept pub-
licly. On Weibo, one of China’s largestsocial networks, the hashtag for Bryant’s
death drew nearly 2.5 billion views in a
day. Former President Barack Obama
said, “Kobe was a legend on the court
and just getting started in what would
have been just as meaningful a sec-
ond act,” and world leaders from Israel
to Venezuela shared their own condo-
lences. Murals of Bryant with his daugh-
ter appeared in states from Texas to
Massachusetts. Across the Philippines,
skyscrapers lit up in tribute.
In Los Angeles, thousands gath-
ered to cry and light candles outside the
downtown Staples Center—“the house
that Kobe Bryant built” as host Alicia
Keys called it at the top of a notably sub-
dued Grammy Awards held in the arenaSports
INDELIBLE MOMENTS
Clockwise from top left: In 2019, Bryant with daughters Natalia,
Bianka and Gianna, and wife Vanessa, pregnant with daughter
Capri; chatting with Michael Jordan during a 1997 game; with
Jerry West, left, upon joining the Lakers in 1996; showing off his
gold medal at the 2012 Olympics; clutching his Oscar in 2018