award winning journalists new york times bestsellers no topic out of bounds no opinions left

unsaid an institution for sports talk and information this is the sports reporters here's mike

lupica mitch alb and bob ryan i'm bob ryan of the boston globe and espian i'm mike lupac of the new york

daily news and mlb dot com i'm mitch alb of the Boston Globe and ESPN. I'm Mike Lupig of the New York Daily News and MLB.com.

I'm Mitch Album of the Detroit Free Press, and we welcome you to the sports reporter's podcast,

the podcast incarnation of the long-running Sunday morning TV show on ESPN.

A difficult show to do today because the world is talking about the story that we will be talking

about this morning, and that is the tragic, untimely death of Kobe Bryant at 41 years of age,

his daughter Gianna at 13 years of age, and seven other passengers of a helicopter that early

Sunday morning on a foggy Orange County in Los Angeles morning

had some kind of difficulty and crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, California, killing all of the

passengers and bringing to a stunning end a career that brings to mind endless adjectives.

Kobe Bryant was a complex person with a complex life, but he was a basketball superstar.

And we begin this morning with Mike and Bob.

I think just your initial thoughts when you first heard the news, because this is a little bit one of those

where were you when you heard x happened on account of his youth what was your

Mitch I was sitting at home yesterday afternoon Zach Lupica lives in California now and he called

me and he said dad there's a crazy story out there and i said what he said that cobi brian just died

in a helicopter crash and and again zach it felt like he was getting it even in faster real time

the rest of us because he was out there okay so he knew where to go and at first it was only TMZ

and i think everybody's reaction was it would have been pretty reckless but they they

they it made it was very difficult to believe that they would go with this story Mitch and

...