There are two nails in every basketball court. Two nails hammered perfectly in the center of the free throw lines on every shiny, wood basketball court. Every. Single. One.
There’s such a simple and consistently beautiful thing about that. On every court I’ve ever walked, dribbled, sprinted, maybe puked on, there’s two tiny nails that make an imaginary line down the center of the court.
Watch any player shoot a free throw. They probably will look down, set up their feet, look at the nail, breath and conduct their shooting routine.
I forgot how old I was, but my dad came to me and said that I needed to pick my routine. I needed to have something that I did every time at the line. I needed to have something that would help me to calm down, concentrate and make the free throw – because they’re free.
My dad says that all the time.
“You gotta make your free throws. They’re literally giving them to you!”
Four dribbles with my right hand, one spin. That’s what I did every time I went to the line. It’s something a basketball player remembers no matter what. It’s just becomes part of you.
My dad coached my siblings and I from the minute we were strong enough to heave a Spalding up to an eight-foot goal. He runs our city’s recreation department so we basically lived in gyms. We would always go and still do go to the gym by our house when it’s closed, so that we could have it to ourselves.
My three siblings and I had the best 2-on-2 games you could imagine. It would, no matter what, always end in a fight. We are competitive as hell with each other. But, we could also have so much fun that we would cry from laughing in the end.
It’s probably my favorite thing that we all share – a love for the game. We all four did play or are currently playing for Roswell High School. I think is so unique for a group of siblings to do the same thing and all share a similar passion for it. We all ran up and down that same court so many times. Sweat, tears, joy. All experienced doing the same thing, playing the same game.
Sports, man. What an undeniable power they have on so many.
I still can’t believe it.
I’ve seen every headline. Every photo. Every video. Every highlight. Every tweet.
And it still does not seem real.
I thought I was reading a headline from the National Enquirer: “Lady Gives Birth to Octopus Twins. Jennifer Aniston Proposes to Brad Pitt.”
This can’t be happening. I check Twitter. Nothing. I Googled “Kobe” and hit the news button.
Everything just stopped.
I’ve never felt anything like this. Like a hole was ripped out of my sports-loving soul. Kobe? Kobe Bryant? He can’t die. He’s not supposed to leave us this way. He’s someone we have watched for so long and watched him accomplish everything in the absolute best ways possible. He was supposed to grow old and admire how the game evolved, all in an immortal fashion. He was supposed to watch his daughters grow up.
Social media brought Gianna ‘Gigi’ Bryant aka Mambacita to the world. The little baller queen was on her way to becoming a star. You could see it. She was built just like him, had the same love for the game and an identical, stone-cold fade-away. It was so cool to watch him take her to every game – NBA, WNBA, the USWNT – all of them. She was right there next to him, soaking up every ounce of knowledge she could.
He literally sat courtside with Gigi and spoke Slovenian to jokingly taunt Luka Doncic. Only Kobe…
When I was playing basketball at Roswell, I was fortunate enough to share the court with Andreona Keys, who is by far the best player I’ve played next to. (She went on to play at Purdue.) My best friend and other teammate Abby Jessen and I would call her Kobe. She emulated similar traits to him…just had an unreal will to win and would carry those around her. Before practice started or when we were just playing around, all three of us would yell, “KOBE” and attempt his fade-away, not unlike every other basketball player growing up would do too.
It’s hard to write down words that describe the immense legacy that Kobe will leave behind and how many people he affected. There really are no words. You can see it everywhere, the spirit and relentless work ethic that he preached and lived for. Players like Luka, Trae Young, Devin Booker embody everything about him because they grew up watching him.
As a girl who grew up basically doing two things – playing soccer and basketball – watching Kobe play was one thing, but to see him retire and gracefully grow into the father that he became was so fun to watch. He was such an advocate and supporter for women’s sports. One message that made such an impact on not only myself, but all of the women’s soccer community was when he quote-tweeted Sydney Leroux’s photo of her bruised and burned legs after playing on turf before the 2015 World Cup in support of better facilities for the USWNT. Only Kobe…
The world stopped on Sunday. It’s one of the darkest days in sports in my lifetime, and I really am going to miss seeing him just live his life. It was such a blessing to be able to watch him thrive, dominate, win and live for so long.
Some of my best memories are from watching basketball with my family, especially my dad. We are the night owls of the fam, so we would be the only two that could stay up long enough to watch the NBA games on the west coast. And most of the time that meant we got to watch Kobe and the Lakers.
This is just indescribable. The way it happened. When it happened. Just mind-numbing.
We must lift up Kobe’s wife, Vanessa, and their three girls, Natalia, Bianka and Capri. We must lift up the families of the other seven passengers on the helicopter – John Altobelli, his wife Keri and his daughter Alyssa, Payton Chester and her mother Sarah Chester and the pilot, Ara Zobayan.
I wrote this watching his last game when he scored 60. You know there was magic in the Staples Center that night. And like the nails in the wood panels of every basketball court, Kobe will be with us always – in the very center, holding us down.
“The most important thing is you must put everybody on notice that you’re here and you’re for real.”
“Sport is the greatest metaphor we have for life. And we must treat it so.”
-KB
MAGGIE PRUITT 