Kobe and Gianna Bryant’s Bond Was Made of Love and Basketball

“It’s sad every day,” Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard said.

As recently as August, Leonard and his new Clippers teammate Paul George were at the Mamba Sports Academy for their own sessions with the self-styled “Black Mamba,” seemingly as eager to learn from Bryant as Gianna and her teammates, including Alyssa Altobelli and Payton Chester, who also died in the crash.

“We grew up here,” George told reporters in Los Angeles. “He was our hero. He was our G.O.A.T.”

On Friday night at Staples, before the Lakers’ first game since the tragedy, LeBron James made a powerful four-minute speech in Bryant’s honor and then led his former team against the visiting Portland Trail Blazers — after the Lakers convinced the league office that Tuesday’s game against the Clippers had to be postponed.

It was too much, Lakers officials insisted, to ask players and club employees to stage a nationally televised game just two days after Bryant’s death.

Friday was still too soon for Portland’s grief-stricken Carmelo Anthony, who asked to skip the game at Staples. He had been scheduled to have dinner with Bryant in Los Angeles on Thursday night.

Terry understood completely. Upon returning home to Dallas, he found it difficult just to coach two games this week, for his high school girls’ team at North Dallas Adventist Academy.

“I was shaking going back into a gym,” Terry said. “My hands were literally shaking. I don’t know how the Lakers are going to do it.”

N.B.A. teams have confronted sudden death before. But they have done so sporadically, rarely during the season, and never on this scale — with a legend, children and family members involved.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/sports/basketball/kobe-gianna-bryant-mamba-academy.html?emc=rss&partner=rss