I work in a youth prison and we are not allowed to have our cellphones in the building. Plus we work in a rural environment and T-Mobile combined with an iPhone 5 is not going to get the job done out there so I just leave it in the car.
I was working visitation this Sunday when one of the staff said “You heard about Kobe?”
Nah, what happened?
F*ck outta here!! Oh like how Eddie Murphy was dead?
“No cap Scott, they stopped the Pro Bowl and everything.”
When I went to CNN and saw the headline, I got this uneasiness in my stomach that I haven’t been able to shake off ever since I heard the news. I haven’t had an appetite at all. I quickly got to the fourth stage of grief, which is depression.
I didn’t go to work today. I didn’t have the mental energy necessary to excel at my job. Apart of being a psychologist in a prison is being lied to by your clients on a regular basis. Now factor in working around antisocial teenagers who have learned how to survive by any means necessary. I can’t afford to not be focused in that environment because I have a family I have to get back to.
Ironically, being sad about Kobe showed that I did not have the Mamba Mentality today.
Obviously, I didn’t know Kobe nor have I met Kobe. The closest I have been to Kobe was when my wife took me to see the Lakers play the Cavaliers for Valentine’s Day a few years ago. I think he had like 40 on Kyrie that night.
I think Kobe’s death has hit people of my generation so hard because we grew up with Kobe.
I was going into my sophomore year of high school when Kobe came into the league as a teenager. I was fascinated. Here was a kid with a 1080 on his SAT so he could have gone to any college. It wasn’t like he was a jock that was academically struggling and couldn’t qualify. But instead he wanted the challenge of practicing his craft at the highest level.
My wife pointed out to me this morning that he was randomly featured in the Destiny’s Child video for Bug-A-Boo.
And his prom date was Brandy.
If you weren’t there, it’s kind of hard to explain how huge of a star Brandy was in 1996.
But my xennials know, Brandy was a really, really, really, big deal.
So this person that was essentially my age, was taking mega-stars to the prom and going straight to the NBA. Felt like anything was possible.
And I was in the market for a new NBA team. Yes I’m a New Yorker AND I couldn’t be a Knicks fan anymore. Between what is known in the Scott Household as the Charles Smith Fiasco and Pat Riley letting John Starks go 0-11 from 3 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals with two great 3 point shooters rotting on the bench (Rolondo Blackman and Hubert Davis), I just couldn’t put myself through the torture anymore.
That summer, the Lakers signed Shaq and traded for the draft rights to Kobe. I was all in.
You know the rest…
“My original goal was to try to win eight. And you push for it, you push for it, you push for it and you do the best you can, but at the end of the day you can be comfortable with the results with where they landed, where they ended up. That’s the most important thing. I can be really comfortable with the career that I’ve had because I worked as f*cking hard as I possibly could.” – Kobe Bryant, January 9, 2020 – All The Smoke podcast(I think this was his last interview).
One of the things my wife loves about me is that no one will outwork me. She knows that I don’t know how to half-ass anything. She also knows that if I fail, it won’t be because the effort was not there. It’s how I’m wired, especially in relationships. Unless I reasonably believe that I have done everything humanly possible to make something work, it is hard for me to walk away. The caveat is that once I have done everything I possibly could, then I can walk away without looking back, because I know I gave it all I had.
Kobe had no regrets or struggles about retiring from basketball because he knew he gave it all that he had and didn’t cheat the game. I know that when I’m ready to hang it up, I know that I can leave with a clear conscience. I think we all should aspire to this level.
“I can be an absolute teddy bear at home with my family, with my kids and enjoying that family time. I’m really psychotic about having that family time, to make sure we’re doing what we have to do as a family. I’m doing school drop-offs and pick-ups, giving my baby a shower, I’m making sure I’m there for them as much as possible. “ – Kobe Bryant, January 9, 2020 – All The Smoke podcast
Kobe’s death hits us hard because he died doing something he will never see an award for, or featured in a Hall of Fame about: he died being a dad.
He gave 20 years of his life to a sport that he loved and he achieved some of the highest levels of respect for it. And in his retirement he turned that same Mamba Mentality towards his wife and four daughters.
As new parents who are often challenged to balance the demands of our careers with the desire to be active, present and nurturing parents, we have so much respect and understanding for the priority Kobe placed on coaching his daughter Gianna at this point in his life. You can only imagine the countless activities, school programs and bedtime routines Kobe missed out on over the span of his career – sacrifices all working parents have to make. He did so with the expectation that there would be time to make up for all that lost time. We can’t expect that time because it’s not promised.
Death is an ever-present truth for all of us but when a celebrity dies, especially one that has been growing and maturing along with us, it reminds us of how fleeting time really is. So the Scotts have made the decision to live with intention. Use that sick leave, take that vacation, start that business. Stop putting things off for a more convenient time that you assume will come.
My job will replace me, quickly, if I die. Yours will too. I remember doing a debriefing when we were living in Guam and while I’m going through the debriefing, they were already talking about who is going to take over this person’s job responsibilities. I remember not long after I graduated from grad school, I was working with a professor on a separate grant and she died, at work. I went to her funeral and by that afternoon, her job was posted. Hadn’t even been a week.
The finality of death puts things in perspective. I’ve lost a father and we’ve all lost countless friends and family members. We’ve even dealt with our fair share of celebrity deaths over the years, even though Biggie would still be around if 2pac hadn’t lied.
But I know after hearing about Kobe and his daughter’s tragic deaths, I held my little family a little tighter. My wife leaned into reading Llama Llama Red Pajama and Please Baby Please ONE MORE TIME even though she’d had enough.
So I try to keep some perspective and I try not to take moments with my family for granted.
As a father, the hardest part has been thinking about how in the moments of the helicopter crashing, all you want to do is protect your daughter and there was nothing that he could do, except hold her and tell her it was going to be all right, knowing that it wasn’t. As a mother and a wife, Fancy couldn’t imagine that in the blink of an eye, she gets a phone call and has to bury the both of us.
This tragedy reminds us that nothing is promised and that nothing is more important than family. I think the way you honor someone’s life in death is to value yours while you’re still living.
With that being said, I’m going to go pick my pick my daughter up from preschool early. It’s the least I can do.
And I know that Kobe would trade anything to be in my shoes right now, getting ready to pick his daughter up from school.
#MambaForever #LiveNow
Keep Calm and Adopt! 