January 27

Monday morning darkness, up before the alarm and not sure why, tear away from sleep and reach to check the time. Kobe is dead. Helicopter crash. It’s no longer difficult to keep my eyes open as I remember that yesterday the fabric of the basketball world was ripped in half.

It doesn't seem possible to overstate the significance and the tragedy of Kobe Bryant’s death, magnified and multiplied by the fact his daughter Gianna, the second-oldest of four, was also killed along with seven others. It is one of the most shocking events in recent history. The saddest in NBA history, if not all of professional sports. In an instant, a man who was untouchable can only be seen again via the millions of hours of video that have documented and remixed nearly his entire life.

It is a moment so stunning and seemingly random it makes you think there's something to that theory of quantum mechanics about an infinite number of universes that break away and multiply, splinter, at each fork in the road, each decision. There must be many, many other planes of existence where he’s still there. Just hours prior, in his final tweet, Kobe had congratulated LeBron for passing him and moving into third on the all-time NBA scoring list -- a feat LeBron accomplished on a road game in Philly, Kobe's birthplace. 

We were just getting used to this retired-mature-father-mentor Kobe. He was only 41. He was going to be a fixture in basketball and culture, a living world icon, for the next 40, 50+ years. He was going to win more Oscars, build and sell companies, and be adored and idolized by Hollywood elites and world leaders, and it was going to irritate me because I grew up a Blazers fan and didn’t he already have the most grandiose farewell tour ever fathomed, culminating in a perfectly obscene, here-to-be-seen Los Angeles lovefest? Wasn’t that enough ego feeding? Yeah, that game where he dropped 60. That shit was crazy.

No animosity now. The last of it drained from me, rushed out into the vacuum, like those texts I got yesterday were sledgehammer blows to the porthole window of a space capsule floating through the galaxy. It’s animosity that’s been seeping away for some time, ever since that farewell tour, because when you’re watching the departure of a legend it’s best to just... watch:

For most of that game, Boston fans booed their bitter rival whenever he touched the ball. Not by the end.

In retirement, Kobe continued to make it harder to hate him. He briefly put on a little weight, a soft spot in his fiercely chiseled competitive spirit armor, and even managed a moment of self-deprecation about it. Most recently, he was courtside at NBA games with Gianna, a budding player herself, talking basketball, being a father.

Of course, it wasn’t just Gianna that Kobe mentored. From basketball players and top athletes, performers, and artists around the world, the outpouring of Kobe stories and memories has been unprecedented. When news of the crash broke, ESPN moved the Oregon-Oregon State game (a top-10 matchup in women’s college basketball) to another channel in order to provide continuing coverage, as endless media heavyweights and former players came on to try and process what had just happened to the five-time NBA champion who played his entire 20-year career for the league's most storied franchise.

Everybody wanted to talk. Every event paid tribute. I felt the need to watch basketball, the Blazers, Lillard, Melo, Ariza, McCollum, the Moda Center crowd. On the broadcast, they brought on Jermaine O'Neal, and it was oddly comforting. I didn't think about how his final appearance in a Portland uniform was Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals, which culminated in Kobe's infamous lob to Shaq. It was just nice to see someone from that era, talking.

In the ESPN game that was bumped for Kobe coverage, Sabrina Ionescu, one of the best players alive, missed warmups and was in tears because of how much Kobe meant to her. She was one of many young (and old) stars who had a close personal relationship with him. Beth Mowins, the play-by-play announcer, called Kobe “such a champion of the cause, with his four daughters, and his respect and friendship for women’s basketball players.” Ionescu dedicated her season to Bryant.

There will be many other seasons, even careers, now played in his honor. His memorial services will have the greatest collection of basketball and athletic talent ever assembled in one place. Foundations will be created, plaques, statues, awards, speeches, banners, roads, bridges, buildings, shoes, albums, movies, songs in his honor, beginning with one last night to open the Grammy's, held, in one of many surreal twists that continue to emerge, at the Staples Center, the house that Kobe built:

It will all be so much, but it will never again seem like too much.