I've been watching NBA basketball for literally my entire life. Some of my earliest memories directly centre on it--staying up late on school-nights to watch west coast games that went into overtime(s); idolizing the '92 Dream Team and putting up decal cut-outs of all of them on my bedroom walls; collecting and trading basketball cards with NBA-obsessed friends; getting jerseys, Starter jackets, and player-endorsed sneakers for birthdays and Christmases; wearing said jerseys, jackets, and sneakers while shooting hoops for countless hours, pretending to be my favourite players.
It truthfully was my first love, and I still love it. My earliest "career goal" was to someday play in the league, though the reality of my limited talents set in soon enough. Nevertheless, some of the happiest (and, admittedly, most painfully disappointing!) moments in my life that did not actually involve me personally or directly were NBA-specific moments, including, most recently, experiencing the Raptors' championship run together with scores of exuberant Canadian basketball fans.
As a lifelong NBA viewer, watching Kobe Bryant was a supreme pleasure. He was just the best of the best: a totally singular combination of otherworldly talent, ferocious tenacity, and indefatigable dedication to his craft. Whether in the Finals or in an otherwise unremarkable regular-season game, he always threatened to do something stunning, something unforgettable, something that even the most constant and attentive of basketball fans had never quite seen before. His 81-point game (against the Raptors) and his 60-point swansong are just two notable examples among so many. He wasn't perfect (on or off the court), but it was his relentless, if quixotic, pursuit of absolute basketball perfection that made him so utterly compelling to watch--a drive brilliantly captured in Spike Lee's Kobe Doin' Work.
I guess I did know on some level that he was only 41, or around that age. It just feels like he's been present in my life for so damned long. Which, come to think of it, makes perfect sense, really--I've grown up alongside him, watching him enter the league as a teenager, straight out of high school, then rapidly ascend to dominate for most of two decades. That elusive sixth ring notwithstanding, his basketball career felt extraordinarily complete. His life after the NBA, so tragically, was not--and that tragedy is multiplied exponentially by the deaths of his young daughter and others. It's surreal, and it's awful.
