I think I was about eight years old and my sister came into the room and she asked me,

hey, who's your favorite basketball player?

And I said, well, my favorite nugget is Nick Van Axel. My favorite non-nugget is Kobe Bryant. And she said, well, if you had to choose one, who is your true favorite basketball player and I thought

and I knew what I was supposed to say I knew I like I wanted to say it was Nick Van Axel I was a die-hard Nuggets fan but I couldn't and so I said well my favorite favorite is Kobe Bryant

So then a two week couple weeks later Christmas rolls around and under the

tree I opened up a brand new Kobe Bryant Jersey and I was so so stoked.

Put it on right away, went outside, started shooting hoops,

and then I also remember, I realized, and this is silly,

but I realized if you cover up the B and T in Bryant, it says Ryan.

So I used to take athletic tape when I would go hoop with my friends and make it seem like I had a custom Jersey that said

uh that said Ryan was it an eight or 24 it was an eight yeah not that young

but Not that you're not that young. But man what a what a tragic day yesterday. We talk a lot about

crying on this podcast and I cried a lot yesterday. I cried for first about Kobe and then I cried a lot thinking about his daughter. It's just so

heartbreaking to think that, you know, she, Kobe in 41 years lived a lot of life, maybe more life than most of us ever will.

But she didn't, and that's what I kept coming back to,

and I just, the fear and the horror of what must have been going through their minds when they're going down that that really that really took me down yesterday so

Sad it's it's hard to believe that it's true and you know even waking up this morning is it hasn't sunk in I think to a lot of people including myself of of what happened because Kobe was bigger than the Lakers.

He was bigger than the NBA.

He was bigger than sports.

He was bigger than life.

And how does something bigger than life and how does something bigger than life go how is that gone and so that

that's what I'm having trouble understanding you You know, he's Kobe. He's a saying, you know, even people that weren't basketball fans, of course, you know, every kid including myself on the basketball court when you

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