Hello, folks. We are obviously a college basketball podcast, but it would not sit right with us to just ignore what happened this past Sunday in the basketball world.

There's not a single corner of the hoops world that is not impacted by Kobe Bryant's passing.

And myself, Kai, and Matt are the age where Kobe dominated the sport, the NBA and NBC, the Shaq

Kobe 3P, all the way through his 2016 retirement. So like any other hoop fan, he's been a part of

our consciousness for more than two decades now. His love and his family, his relentless desire

to improve in all aspects of life, I think, are tremendous

lessons for everyone.

So we wanted to take a second to acknowledge what happened and the enormous loss that the

basketball world feels.

Matthew.

Well said, Jim.

It was a really weird day yesterday.

I was surprised how shook I was by this.

Just to put a cherry on top of what Jim said there in the opening,

the one Kobe memory I will have was a microcosm of his overall, you know, just his legacy

of what a diehard competitor student of the game he was. The documentary, I think Spike Lee made

Kobe doing work. It's just really basic documentary where he just basically narrates an entire

game, but it pretty much encapsulates Kobe's just, you know, next level basketball

mind and his just overall passion for the game. So from a basketball fan perspective,

I appreciate that and I will always remember that. I will just add, I didn't realize how much

I loved Kobe until he was gone.

May he rest in peace.

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