January 28, 2020
Been trying to wrap my head around this Kobe tragedy and I haven’t had any success. Like everybody else who has been affected by this tremendously catastrophic event, I am grief-stricken, bewildered, and finding everyday life a whole lot more difficult to deal with than it was before Sunday. I heard the news while I was out on the track coaching hurdlers. One of the kids’ parents was talking to another parent, and I overheard him say something about an accident. I assumed it was a local accident, and that it would affect traffic on the way home. I asked, “There was an accident?” The parent, whose eyes were down looking at his phone, said, “Kobe died in a helicopter crash.”
At that moment, my initial reaction was the same as everyone else’s when they first heard the news: Kobe? Not Kobe! No way! Kobe Bryant? Are you sure? Must be fake news. This is the era of fake news. Gotta be fake news. I checked my own phone and saw the report from TMZ. There was still hope. Until I see it on ESPN or CNN or somewhere like that, I’m holding out hope. And of course, a few minutes later, it was the top story on ESPN’s website.
Then more details slowly filtered in. There had been a heavy fog that morning–so dense that the local police kept their helicopters grounded. Kobe’s oldest daughter was with him. They were on their way to one of her basketball games. There were others on the helicopter. A total of five people. No, a total of nine people. One of his daughter’s teammates and both of her parents. A coach. A mother and daughter. The pilot. No survivors.
For a long time I focused on the family aspect of things. Kobe the dad with his beloved daughter, both gone. How is the rest of his family supposed to go on? And the other family–the Altobelli family–dad, mom, and daughter all gone. In an instant. I have a daughter. She’s 21. What would it be like to face death together? How would my wife go on without us?
Then my thoughts went to the moment itself. How long were they aware that they were about to crash? For how long did they knew it was an absolute certainty that they were about to die, that they were about to burn in flames? I’d like to think that they were totally oblivious until the moment of impact, that they suffered no fear, no psychological trauma. I’d like to think that they died instantly without knowing that they were going to die. But the helicopter, according to reports, dipped dramatically before crashing. So, they must have known during that dip that something very bad was happening. Even if it was just, let’s say, five seconds of realization, I can’t help thinking what that five seconds was like. Five seconds of knowing there is a 100% chance you are about to die. Five seconds of thinking of all the loved ones you will leave behind. Five seconds of feeling totally helpless to do anything about it. Five seconds of pure terror. It’s just too much. Too much to imagine. But I have to imagine it. Because they went through it. It happened. It wasn’t a scene in a movie.
Then I started thinking about the basketball side. Kobe’s daughter was a hooper, and she was her daddy’s little girl. I think about grown men crying during warmups, during games. I think of Kyrie Irving being unable to play because he was so heartbroken. I think of the Lakers finding out on the team plane–after Lebron had just surpassed Kobe on the all-time scoring list, and then gushed about Kobe in a lengthy interview after the game–that the greatest player in the history of their storied franchise was gone from this earth. The whole thing is just surreal. It’s gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, and incomprehensible. It’s too tragic to be real.
So, the next step is to ask, since this event makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, how do we make sense of it? We can talk about the decision to fly in foggy conditions for as long as we want, but that’s not going to bring those nine people back. We can talk about changing the NBA logo from a silhouette of Jerry West to a silhouette of Kobe Bryant, but that’s not going to bring Kobe back, or his daughter back, or any of the others back. I want to know, why did this happen? Not just in the sense of what happened to that helicopter on that fateful Sunday morning. Not just in the sense of what can be done to prevent similar tragedies from ever again occurring. But in the cosmic sense–what are we supposed to do with this tragedy? How are expected to respond? How are we expected to transform the grief and sorrow into something that is uplifting and inspiring? How does this tragedy fit into the larger picture of what’s happening beyond this earthly existence?
For me, the first step is to go back to my personal default plan of attack, which is to create my own why. If there is no logical why, create your own why. When there is no logical explanation, create your own explanation–not by coming up with some poetic words, but by living your life in a way that directly answers the question why.
When I was diagnosed with the rare blood disease, aplastic anemia, at the age of seventeen, I didn’t know why it had happened. My doctor said that the disease was usually caused by exposure to toxins or chemicals in the environment, but neither I nor anyone in my family could identify any toxins or chemicals I had been exposed to. So, my doctor concluded, in my case, that the illness was “idiopathic,” meaning, there was no way to explain how I had contracted it. Similarly, my miraculous full recovery in the matter of a few months was equally inexplicable. Most people died from aplastic anemia back in 1983. Hardly any patients made a full recovery. Even those who made a full recovery didn’t do so until at least a year after diagnosis. I made a full recovery within three months of diagnosis. Why? Why was I chosen to survive, to live? Why were others not as fortunate as I? Because I deserved it? Because I had earned it? Because God was watching over me? If God was watching over me, then why didn’t God watch over others who had fallen fatally ill? Why didn’t God watch over some of the other patients on the oncology ward at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia? It wasn’t adding up.
It wasn’t until I started teaching and coaching–a good ten years after my hospital stay–that I started to create my own why. I couldn’t medically explain why I had gotten sick with aplastic anemia, nor why I had recovered so quickly, but I could explain through the life I lived. So that’s what I decided to do. With every student I taught, with every athlete I coached, I was affirming why I had gotten sick, and why I had gotten better. To this day, I say that every life I touch–through my teaching, my coaching, my writing, etc.–is another explanation as to why I got sick and why I got better. If I hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have the layers of emotional and spiritual depth that my illness gave me. And if I hadn’t gotten better, I wouldn’t be here to influence lives on this concrete earth. So, every day is an opportunity, every student is an opportunity, every athlete is an opportunity to answer the question as to why I got sick, and why I got better, and I put the onus on myself to make sure I never waste an opportunity.
Same thing when my former athlete, Cameron Akers, passed away at the age of 28 back in 2012. His death sent me into a deep dark abyss. It was so sudden, and he was so young, and we were so close. Yet his death, and the desire to honor our relationship, was what inspired me to start The Hurdle Magazine, which is still going strong six years later. It’s what inspired me to do the Team Steve Speed & Hurdle Camps, with his image on the camp T-shirts. We have done seven camps so far, and have our eighth coming up in March. If not for the tragic loss of Cam, and the subsequent desire to keep his memory alive, I probably would not have had the motivation to pursue such an endeavor. I wouldn’t have felt the sense of urgency. And I’ve come to understand that a sense of urgency is a good thing, because it gets your ass off the couch and puts you out there in the world where you can make a difference.
So, what I’m saying, in regards to the helicopter crash in Calabasas, CA on January 26, 2020, is that we all have to create our own why, individually and collectively. An example of this type of thing already happening would be Kendrick Perkins reaching out to Kevin Durant to squash a petty Twitter beef. Kobe’s death enabled Perkins to realize that being right or being wrong didn’t matter, and that being a good friend did matter very much. If the sense of loss you’re feeling ultimately motivates you to push yourself in a direction you otherwise would’ve been afraid to pursue, then those nine people didn’t die for nothing. If the tragedy inspires you to tell your family members and friends that you love them, and to hold them in your arms and hug them, then those nine people didn’t die in vain. If the tragedy leads to more meaningful and substantive relationships in the long-term, not just in the immediate aftermath, then those nine people didn’t die in vain. If the tragedy leads you to focus on making a difference in the lives of others instead of fixating on your personal ambitions and desires, then those nine people didn’t die in vain. Why did those nine people die? Why did we lose one of the greatest basketball players in history at the age of 41? The answer is up to us. We must create our own why.
In a recent episode of the sports talk show Undisputed, Shannon Sharpe was saying that the loss of Kobe feels personal, even for those of us who didn’t know him personally, because he’s been on our television screens since the mid 1990’s. We watched him grow from a high school phenom to an NBA superstar to a 5-time NBA champion to a husband and father to a retired former athlete enjoying life as a dad and as a mentor to many younger athletes. He lived his entire adulthood before our eyes.
I liked hearing Sharpe’s insights and I’m glad he said what he did, but I feel he didn’t quite finish the point he was making. The reason that the death of Bryant feels so personal is because he inspired us. Do you understand what I’m saying? He inspired us. A few months ago I interviewed former football player Charles Young for a book I’m writing on another sports legend–Renaldo Nehemiah, who broke the world record in the 110 meter hurdles three times between 1978-1981, before the age of 23. Nehemiah went on to play for the San Francisco 49ers, and won a Super Bowl with them in 1984. Young and Nehemiah were teammates in Nehemiah’s first year in San Francisco. The point I’m getting to is this: Young, when I interviewed him, identified Nehemiah as someone who was an inspiration to many. “Do you know what the word ‘inspire’ means?” Young asked me. “It means to breathe life into,” he said. “So when you’re inspiring someone, you’re breathing life into that person. That’s Renaldo. He inspired people.”
And that’s Kobe. He was an inspiration. He breathed life into us. Doesn’t matter whether you’re a laker fan or not. Whether you rooted for him or against him. Whether you even follow the NBA at all. The reason he inspired us was because he gave all of himself to the game of basketball. He committed to it totally. People like that are so rare that you can’t help but be moved by them. They make you aware of potentialities within yourself that you didn’t even know were there, or that you were scared to face because you weren’t ready for that level of commitment to any chosen endeavor. Such people set an example that we all must aspire to, so that we too can inspire as we have been inspired.
