Kobe Bryant’s legacy is all over the modern NBA

As long as people continue playing basketball and obsessively pursuing their passions, Kobe Bryant’s spirit will never die.

Twenty-three seconds after sitting down at the podium for his pregame press conference, Lloyd Pierce broke the silence. “Well,” he said. “Forgive me for being emotional.”

Thus began a moving six-minute eulogy to Kobe Bryant, who died tragically in a helicopter accident with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, on Sunday afternoon, reportedly on their way to one of Gianna’s basketball games. Seven other people died in the crash, and the 41-year-old Bryant — who retired from the NBA less than four years ago — leaves behind his wife, Vanessa, and three daughters — Bianka, Natalia, and Capri.

Pierce and the rest of the NBA could be forgiven for being emotional on a day like this. Around the league, players, coaches, fans, and organizations paid their respects to the future Hall-of-Famer during games, on social media, and even outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Atlanta’s game against the Wizards began, as each game on Sunday did, with the two teams paying homage to Bryant. After the Hawks won the opening tip, Trae Young, wearing the number eight as a tribute to Kobe, crouched down in the backcourt and was called for an eight-second violation. The Wizards, in turn, took a 24-second shot-clock violation — recognizing the two numbers Bryant wore in his 20-year career with the Lakers. “There were a lot of things going through my mind after I heard the news,” Young said. “I was just trying to think of something I could try and pay homage to the legend.”

Young had become close with Bryant in recent months, and the Hawks’ point guard was one of Gianna’s favorite NBA players. She occasionally worked out with Young’s trainer, Alex Bazzell, and attended two Hawks games this season with her father. Kobe, one of Young’s basketball idols, also became a fan of Trae’s. In one of the last conversations the two shared, Bryant told Young how proud he was of the way the point guard’s game has progressed. He urged him to continue serving as a role model for kids like Gianna — in much the same way Bryant had influenced Young’s generation. “He was just telling me how much he’s seen my game progress,” Young said. “Just to continue to inspire these kids and continue to play my heart out.”

Young responded with 45 points and 14 assists (on 24 shot attempts) in a win over the Wizards, but the game itself was an afterthought given the mood and emotion in the arena. “For two-and-a-half hours, you felt like something was distracting,” Pierce said. The Hawks didn’t do much in the way of preparation for Sunday’s contest once they heard the news of Bryant’s passing. Instead, they sat in the locker room, shocked by a reality the entire NBA community was struggling to process. Just before they took the court, Pierce wrote a two-word gameplan, in big letters, on the whiteboard in the locker room: Mamba Mentality.

That mantra, coined by Bryant in the later stages of his career, has become a way of life for a generation of basketball players who, like Young, idolized the “Black Mamba” during their formative years. The motto is a call to approach the game without mercy, prepared to dominate, and on a day like Sunday, it’s also a necessary reminder of why Kobe and so many others were drawn to basketball in the first place.

“That’s also the love of the game,” Pierce said. “All the things you pour into your work and your craft so that you can dominate allows you to enjoy it, and I just wanted our guys to feel that way. Really engage and be locked in, but also enjoy it and remember to enjoy it. Sometimes I think throughout the course of the year, the ups and downs, you forget that this is just a game. It’s just a game.”

It’s just a game, but Kobe Bryant transcended it.

Kobe was an icon, both on the court and culturally, for his era and for the generation that came after him. His disyllabic moniker evoked clutch shots in key playoff moments, as well as paper balls being tossed into a trashcan by imitators who wanted nothing more than to emulate him. He epitomized the style that defined the NBA epoch in which he played and, for many people, represented the archetypal Winner and a natural successor to Michael Jordan — skilled, athletic, and ruthlessly competitive. Leave aside the validity of those notions; the mere perception of them and the impact that it had on the league set Kobe apart from his peers. Whatever one’s opinions of his on-court value or the aesthetics of his game, he was inarguably one of the most recognizable faces and influential voices in NBA history. He wasn’t the same on-court force Jordan was, but to a generation of fans and players, Kobe was his cultural facsimile.

“I think it’s well-documented what he’s done for the stars of stars today,” said Vince Carter, who played with Bryant on the AAU circuit in the mid-1990s and competed against him for 18 years in the NBA. “What he’s done for players of all magnitudes, of all levels. You can see the lives that he’s touched of current college players. So I think it speaks volumes and speaks for itself. Who he is, where he was as a person in his retired stage. His heart was just pouring out for everybody and he was just willing to help anyone.”

In the years after he retired from the NBA, Bryant was a vocal and prominent supporter of women’s basketball, youth basketball, and the modern NBA (a rare trait among retired players today). He coached Gianna’s AAU Team, the Mambas, and so clearly and deeply cared about his daughter’s development as both a basketball player and a person. In December, Kobe was spotted giving Gigi pointers as the two sat courtside at a Hawks game in Brooklyn. He was her hero; for them to perish together on their way to her basketball game is all too cruel to bear.

“There’s nothing more than the respect I have for him as a father,” said Pierce, who has a young daughter of his own. “Every image you see of him, post-retirement, is with his daughters and with his family. Everything you see online, on Twitter, is about positivity. He’s encouraging others, retweeting positive comments to others, and I think it’s been the biggest transformation of a competitor to a human being that I’ve ever seen.”

It felt as though Bryant had only begun the latter phase of that transformation. He spent so much of his NBA career maniacally devoting himself to the game, seemingly unable to embrace the joy of it all. He genuinely loved doing the work required to be great, and raised his own bar so unreasonably high that he had little choice but to push himself to his limits. His precision, preparation, attention to detail, and competitiveness weren’t supplementary to his greatness; they were the very foundation of it. Few relished basketball’s most challenging elements like he did, few were so spartan as to develop a sort of Stockholm Syndrome toward the most grueling parts of NBA life. That approach has a way of closing one’s self off to teammates, opponents, and the rest of us, and only in the final few years of his life did Bryant allow that exterior to fade. It is an unfathomable tragedy that neither he nor Gianna will get to learn what the other, softer side of Kobe had in store.

“Today is not going to be the end of mourning,” Pierce said. “But it’s a reminder of perspective as to why and to what’s most important. And the now is most important, the who. Who do you need to say hello to? Who do you need to reach out to? The perspective of all this is tough because Kobe’s untouchable in a lot of those guys’ eyes.”

Watching people of such heightened fame and accomplishment pass away before their time has a way of reminding us of our own mortality. If death can claim Kobe Bryant at such a young age, who isn’t within its reach? The basketball world will continue to grieve, but so long as people play this game and pursue their passions with obsessive devotion, Kobe remains immortal.