As someone with an interest in American mythology and who lived in L.A., do you have a sense for what Kobe will mean?
No.
I was totally out of step with the reactions to Nipsey Hussle (“who?”) and Robin Williams (“didn’t we spend the last decade reevaluating him as a coked-up attention-desperate cornball?”)
(And what did they turn out to mean?)
The basketball stars I grew up with were like, Mike and Shaq and Larry Bird (and to a lesser extent Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman and Muggsy fucking Bogues), the last one I noticed was Allen Iverson
(who debuted same year as Kobe, nineteen ninety-six I’m old, but I was in the Philly media market at the time)
Like I became aware of Kobe second or third-hand in the late ‘00s, like “there’s a guy who’s probably the best player today but he’s really arrogant about insisting he’s def. the best of all time” and I was like “that makes sense for someone who grew up under Michael Jordan”
But he never showed the charm of or branched out like Mike, maybe cause both the media environment’s more specialized and the NBA didn’t need to push a public “face” to break thru anymore (tho if you asked me who the “face” was lately I’d say LeBron). Like, even in death commuting to his academy he was about basketball talent
It’ll be at least 15 years until he becomes trivial enough to be a trivia answer, tho
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