Hello, and welcome to the Ringer MBA show. I am Justin Varyer. We are doing something a little bit different on today's episode because things are different in the NBA today.

The news came over yesterday, Sunday, early in the morning. Kobe Bryant tragically died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, which is outside of Los Angeles among those who passed away in the crash where his daughter, Gianna in total nine people died in the crash.

Details are still kind of coming together as we're talking about this on Monday morning. We'll probably learn more about that and we'll also hear from a lot of other people in the NBA, including a bronjame to at this point still hasn't chimed in.

But we are still kind of processing the news as well. And so Rob Mahoney, staff writer of the ringers with me. So Rob, I think the best place to kind of start here as we talk about Kobe and his legacy is just the initial news.

What were your initial thoughts when you heard about what happened yesterday?

I think initially when anyone who's familiar with Kobe, who at this point is an awful lot of people who, you know, whether you're a basketball fan or not, when you hear news like that, you kind of wait for the other shoot or drop, you wait for a retraction or reveal that it's all been a hoax that there's that there's some kind of there's some kind of mistake being made.

And sadly, that wasn't the case. And the more detail that we have gotten, the more tragic it seems both, you know, Kobe and his relationship with his daughter, Gianna and really kind of flying to a tournament with her being kind of his last act as a human being having, you know, reportedly, you know, possibly some of her teammates and their parents and another coach on the team on board.

I mean, you don't you don't want to see anyone taking so early, you know, Kobe was only 41 years old, his daughter only 13 years old.

But for someone who has meant so much to a lot of people, I think the circumstances of it are especially jarring and just the idea that, you know, for all of Kobe's faults, I think post, you know, post his NBA career, he's really taken on an ambassador role for the league for the game.

The idea that you won't just see him on the sideline of some Lakers game five years from now, it's still kind of hard to accept.

Yeah, you hear people talking about the death of JFK is kind of a you remember where you were a moment. This really feels like the case for me, the only thing that I in my lifetime, I'm 32 in rob is of a similar age that I could really remember having a similar reaction to or just like, just a similar just like shockwave giving way to just like trying to process is 9-11.

That's the one time I feel like I remember where I was I could just I could see like everything that was happening that day.

Now, obviously a lot of things are different about this, but one of them among them is just like in that situation, there was someone and someone's to like really direct your eye or toward.

And with Kobe, it's just, it just feels like a loss. It just feels like you're trying to process and like fill a void that was there.

And I think that's it comes across and it's surprising to me, I guess, because I was in particular a big Kobe fan. If anything, I kind of made my bones in the NBA as a career, just at a time when when Kobe was kind of in the later phases of his of his playing days and he almost like became a symbol for the way the game was going away from.

But at the same time, he just feels like this larger than life personas, just someone who's like been in my life for a very long time, and especially if you cover the NBA like Robin, I do, he's just, I mean, he's been one of the faces of the league for as long as I can never remember.

And so I was, you know, it was tough. I'll be honest, you know, this is the last, I don't usually at this point feel things for stories. I think if you work in journalism, you just kind of become numb to these sorts of things, but like, man, it just, it just feels terrible.

I'm still kind of in shock and kind of processing things. I don't know if you're in the same state.

No, very much so. And I think, you know, a lot of it, as you mentioned, you know, coming up in this industry, but even beyond that as a basketball fan, as someone who's watched the game for a long time, there just aren't that many things in your life that are around for over 20 years that you have a relationship with whether you hate them, whether you love to watch them, whether you you idolized Kobe and his work ethic and his drive.

There were a lot of things about him that were deeply admirable in that way. And to have that pulled away, and you still have, you know, the lessons and the memories that a person like that leaves behind, but it's hard to reconcile.

And you know, whether we realize it or not, of course, in those moments, we're dealing with our own kind of, you know, fleeting childhoods and our own mortality and the passing of time and the things that we lose along the way.

We're all trying to kind of process that in this very messy emotional setting. And I think part of it too was seeing the reflection of Kobe in the NBA world yesterday on Sunday, you know, seeing Austin Rivers and Tyson Chandler and Jamal Murray and Demarder Rosen.

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