From Wondry, I'm Dan Rubenstein, and this is Sports Wars.

A few months ago, when we recorded our series about Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal,

we never could have imagined the tragic accident that would take the life of Kobe Bryant, his

daughter Gigi, and eight others aboard a helicopter that January morning.

A few months ago, we spoke to Bleacher reports Howard Beck, who covered those early 2000s

Lakers in Los Angeles as a beatwriter about that era of LA basketball and the complicated

personalities of Kobe and Shaquille before, during, and after that time.

Today, to update things, and to try and make sense of something that's shocked and devastated

LA and the basketball world, we now bring in Kelvin Washington from Spectrum News 1 and

Fox Sports Radio.

Kelvin, thank you very much for joining the show.

I wish we were different circumstances.

Yeah, but I'm looking forward to this conversation.

So my question to you first off, because I'm across the country and you are squarely in

the middle of LA, what is the city like right now as we record this four days after the

tragedy of Kobe Bryant and everybody in that helicopter?

Man, it's been a rough, I don't know, eight or nine months.

If you're including in the loss of Nipsy Hussle back in late March of 2019.

So you had a city that lost someone that specifically in LA was kind of, you know, an icon if you

will big, but I think nationally, his name grew after his passing because of, you know,

the power of social media and people starting to really learn who Nipsy Hussle was and learn

about what he represented and kind of the, you know, the ups and downs of the Nipsy Hussle

...