Kobe’s legacy was more than just basketball

While future ‘Skin’s Spin’ columns will be about USC alumni in and around the world of sports, the first edition of this column must focus on a man who had no direct affiliation with the University, but who touched so many lives nonetheless.

The world is mourning the tragic loss of former Los Angeles Laker Kobe Bryant, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others onboard a helicopter that crashed into the hills of Calabasas Sunday morning. 

It is impossible to articulate just how much Kobe meant to the Lakers organization, the city of Los Angeles, the game of basketball and his admirers all over the world. To those of us who followed his career in the NBA and beyond, he epitomized excellence in everything he did — not only as an athlete, but as a role model. He was — and remains — perhaps more than any other person, my greatest inspiration for wanting to become a professional sports journalist.

My love and respect for Kobe was fostered before I became fully conscious. I grew up in Newport Beach, a suburban coastal town about an hour south of USC’s main campus. Like every town in Southern California, it is a Laker town. 

For my entire childhood and most of my adolescence, Kobe was the face of the Lakers and the NBA. The fact that Kobe is a hero of mine should come as a surprise to no one. 

My first memory of Kobe comes from Christmas morning in 2002. I remember my parents putting his No. 8 jersey over my head while my older brother toddled around in an oversized No. 34 Shaquille O’Neal jersey, mimicking Shaq’s thunderous slam dunks on the five-foot plastic hoop in our living room. Since then, Bryant has been a personal hero to me, and that admiration will remain — if not intensify — despite his early departure from our world.

With that said, I don’t believe I ever saw Kobe Bryant as just a basketball player. He and his family lived in a very expensive part of Newport Beach, so I would occasionally hear stories from friends who encountered him and his daughters in their local neighborhood. These stories humanized him. While Bryant’s greatness as a basketball player is ubiquitously known, what may be less obvious to some was his dedication to his wife, his daughters and his community.

After learning of the devastating news of his death, I reached out to friends from Newport and asked them to share their memories of the man, not the Lakers superstar.

Their stories paint a picture of a man deeply devoted to his wife and kids who sought and found relative normalcy despite his international fame. Even in the prime of his career, whether he was driving his daughters to and from school, serving hot lunches on ‘Taco Tuesdays’ or ‘Pizza Wednesdays’ in their school cafeteria, spending time with his family and friends at Catalina Island, joking around with his neighbors in line at the local supermarket or going to church on Sundays, he was a pillar of his community and his absence will be sorely missed by those who were fortunate enough to cross paths with him.

Bryant’s sudden passing leaves those of us who so fervently admired him with a tremendous feeling of emptiness and sadness — not only for losing him, Gianna and their fellow passengers far too soon, but also for his surviving daughters and wife who now have to find a way to move forward from this tragedy without their father and husband, sister and daughter.

While Kobe is no longer with us, he lives on in the hearts and minds of the millions that were dazzled by his talent and inspired by his example. While it is fair and right to take time to mourn the untimeliness of his death, we must keep his memory alive by appreciating him for all that he was. He surely would have given so much more to this world, but we must be grateful that he gave us all he could while he was here.

When discussing his legacy, Bryant once said, “It’s the one thing you can control. You are responsible for how people remember you — or don’t … So don’t take it lightly.”

Kobe Bryant will be remembered as not only a great athlete, but a gift of a man.

We ought to always remember his work ethic, his curiosity and willingness to ask questions, his relentless ambition, his fearlessness, his humor, his optimism, his professionalism, his eloquence, his love for his family and his commitment to striving for greatness on a daily basis. If we succeed in doing this, his legacy will continue to inspire many generations to come.

Joe Skinner is a sophomore writing about USC alumni in sports. His column, “Skin’s Spin,” runs every other Tuesday.