One of the realities and I suppose responsibilities of certain forms of fame is that people don’t simply like you. They feel like they know you. Like really know you, the way they know a sibling or a close friend. It’s known as a parasocial relationship, and I’d guess that the most obvious examples are professional athletes and famous musicians, exemplars of youth and vitality. Which makes it especially agonizing when one of these iconic figures dies young. Not only do we feel like we lost a close friend, but it also defies our ideals of invincibility. It’s what people felt when John Lennon was assassinated, or when Kurt Cobain died, or how I felt when Michael Hutchens of INXS passed away in a hotel room at 37. It’s also Thurman Munson, catcher for the Yankees who died in a private plane crash. It’s a sadness not simply over someone dying too young, but also with so much left to give, as if the sun suddenly turned off.
Which brings us, of course, to Kobe Bryant, who’s life was cut short at age 41 on Sunday morning in a helicopter crash that ended the lives of all nine on board. Included in that list is Kobe’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna, two other kids and several parents on their way to a youth basketball tournament. There is no easy way to reconcile this sudden loss of life, especially for those who had so much ahead of them. These moments are difficult to comprehend for anyone, whether they be future NBA hall of famers or otherwise. So at some level, this awful saga is yet another reminder that we are all vulnerable to the unpredictable whims of humanity, and as cliché as it may seem, no one has a guarantee on tomorrow.
As you likely know by now, Kobe’s legacy is complex, perhaps most notably because of a sexual assault charge against him in 2003 that forever altered public perception. Even as Kobe over time emerged as one of the most revered basketball players ever, he’s never considered the same way as many other iconic athletes, like Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning, athletes who’ve managed to maintain a cohesive public persona – fairly or not. Kobe’s most likely contemporary is Tiger Woods, an exceptional athlete who is both very smart and worldly but flawed. But Kobe earned back public adoration through his greatest virtue – an unstoppable drive to win and what seemed like an endless capacity to work harder than everybody else. That, more than anything, is what people want from their sports heroes. Despite all the talk about how athletes should act off the court and how they’re supposed to be role models, for the most part, we cherish our favorite athletes for one reason – because of an intoxicating cocktail of athletic greatness and desire. And no one outside of Michael Jordan had a better mix of that than Kobe.
Perhaps because he spent his entire basketball life in Los Angeles, Kobe was well known in the world of Hollywood and entertainment. It’s one thing to be a superstar in Indiana. It’s another to be one in LA or New York. Which is why so many celebrities seemed to have deep ties to the Laker all-star. As much as LA isn’t so much a sports town, it is a Lakers town, and Kobe was the holder of that torch for nearly a generation, one he took from Magic Johnson and recently passed to LeBron James, who despite his talents will never be revered like Kobe in LA. When Kobe died, it felt like we lost an athlete and a LA celebrity all at once – and I suppose we did. In many ways, Kobe was as representational as he was real – including the recognition that he largely carried the aspirational ethos of the NBA on his shoulders during the relative drought between Jordan and the current wave of stars – from LeBron to Steph Curry to James Harden and beyond. At a time when the League played a lumbering style of play with relatively few household names, Kobe Bryant was a reminder that humans could still fly – which is why he remained the singular wall poster of countless teenagers through the good times and the bad.
In the end, perhaps that’s the heart of the issue. Kobe Bryant was one in a legacy of people who seemed to defy human boundaries, someone who made us believe – if for a few hours a week – that limits were simply suggestions. He made us think that the impossible was plausible, and for that, we didn’t just like him, we needed him. And when he’s gone, perhaps a part of us is gone as well.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
