Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

— Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, Bryant entered the NBA directly from high school, and played his entire 20-season professional career in the league with the Los Angeles Lakers. Bryant won five NBA championships, was an 18-time All-Star, 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, was named the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and was a two-time NBA Finals MVP winner. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, he led the NBA in scoring during two seasons, ranks fourth on the league’s all-time regular season scoring, and ranks fourth on the all-time postseason scoring list.

Besides Kobe Bryant being an ultimate basketball player, Bryant was a family man and a girls dad having four kids and all happening to be all daughters. January 26, 2020 a very tragic day in history in the sports world a lot of people’s all time favorite player, a dad, and a husband was killed in a harsh helicopter accident. I personally found out through on a Sunday morning while doing my morning workout through Twitter reading from TMZ news. TMZ isn’t always the most credible source so reading this on that morning had me in a shock hoping the news was fake so I kinda just brushed it off but it only got worse. Then I see lots of people starting to tweet and upload to Instagram about the situation and I am starting to think maybe it is true. 

Kobe Bryant affected so many people’s lives not only in the sports world but life in general. Although I didn’t personally know him it kinda felt like I lost someone who was close to me. Reading upon people who actually knew Kobe, his teammates, coaches, family members hurt very dearly. Bryant retired in 2016, my senior year of high school and it was not the last time he was heard about. He then created his own basketball team of his own “Mamba Academy” and his daughter Gianna was apart of it. The saddest part of the whole thing and that got to me the most is that his daughter was on the helicopter with Bryant. On the bright side that has a lot of people feeling better is that they were like best friends and they at least got to comfort one another in the tragic moment.