OT: Kobe Bryant discussion

[ATTL]

For the first time in my life I feel bad for lakers fans. They watched him come in from high school, drafted at 17, for his entire career. Watched him grow into an MVP and 5 time champion. Champion their city and be a lifer for them. There's not really a player like that in suns history so I have nothing to compare it to.
Whenever I see that Kobe died in a helicopter crash I just think "that's not right. That doesn't happen." Like it's some kind of glitch in the matrix that will get fixed.

I hated kobe for 20 years. He was a pain in our ass every game. It was different from guys like steph, harden, Giannis. Kobe brought in the most obnoxious Lakers fans and you just knew he was going to do something to piss you off. No matter if the Lakers were in their bad/mediocre years with him I just felt uneasy with him on the other team.
I have very few positive memories of the suns playing against him.

I was holding my newborn daughter when the news was coming out that he died. I felt bad at first, shock mostly. I was expecting it to be fake news and someone else was in the crash. No way kobe dies.

More and more news outlets were confirming it and I started accepting it. He lived a great life. Sports legend. 4 kids at home are taken care of their whole lives.

Then MSNBC reported all 4 kids were in the crash and I was crushed. Eventually it came out that "only" 1 daughter was in there with him.

Wilber put it very well.

All I thought was how sad kobe must have felt knowing he couldn't do anything to help his daughter sitting next to him.

I've never actually been sad when a celebrity or athlete died.

[bwgood77]

Knowing they could do nothing probably hurt, though they probably had hope that they would somehow land softly enough and with seatbelts, make it out alive. I just hope if it exploded it took people instantly and didn't trap people who ended up having to burn. It is awful enough but if a parent had to watch a child burn while they couldn't move to help or even if they just have to go through that it would be horrific.

[sunsbum]

I don't think you live hitting the ground going 162 miles an hour..... hopefully.

[bwgood77]

I don't think you live hitting the ground going 162 miles an hour..... hopefully.

I wasn't sure what the crash was like. I thought maybe they were trying to pull up and avoid hitting the terrain and then just hit it, and with a fire already on board, there was then an explosion and/or bigger fire. But I just read it was trying to climb rapidly but then it says it seemed to be falling at high speed...where do you get 162 mph? Seems odd it could be that high if it was rapidly climbing before it fell..

It was an extremely foggy day and the chopper flying low to avoid the worst of it, until it started rapidly climbing to avoid a cloud immediately before the crash. The crash was high impact, and the helicopter seemed to be falling at high speed.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-terrain-awareness-pilot-031437012.html

[sunsbum]

I've read a few articles saying it was a high energy impact and that they were traveling about 160 - 170 miles an hour on impact.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/01/29/kobe-bryant-death-crash-calabasas/

[bwgood77]

Read on Twitter

[lilfishi22]

Read on Twitter

I've always got the impression that he was a guy that was generous in his wisdom, in his time, in his humility and not just his money. We've heard so many stories of Kobe, despite being a fierce competitor, always having time to drop knowledge and wisdom on young up and coming NBA players, college kids and younger. So these stories don't really surprise me but it is extremely heartwarming to actually see it come to light that he was even more generous than I had thought and that the media had written about him.

[NapoleonII]

I remember him just tearing us apart in 2010.

It was a masterclass.