A friend texted me on Sunday, holy shit.

The next text read, Kobe Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash.

I googled it, no one had written anything about it yet except TMZ.

A check Twitter, people had no idea what to believe.

They were still questioning whether TMZ might have been misinformed, might have been

misreporting.

But pretty soon everyone started to realize this was a thing that had really happened.

I texted my friends in Los Angeles.

One of them had heard the news yet, I texted my mom, she was shocked.

It was still too early to process.

Eventually we'd talk about how Kobe might be the biggest loss of an LA icon, maybe

ever.

And we'd talk about how a friend of my mom's had a really rough childhood, but the only

thing her family ever enjoyed together was watching Kobe play for the Lakers.

But on Sunday it was just shock, even more so when we found out Kobe's daughter died

too.

While most of the world was in shock and processing the news, an unexpected fight started brewing

online about Kobe Bryant.

Or maybe the fight was totally predictable for those of us who spend a lot of time online.

Some people wanted to talk about Kobe's rape charges and other people really didn't.

But I think one thing no one saw coming was this fight playing out in a really conspicuous

way at the Washington Post.

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