For a select few, a first name or last name can stand alone. Elvis, Tiger and Diana fall in the first category, Ali and Sinatra in the second. Sometimes, as is the case for JFK and FDR, one's initials suffice.
Whether you're a basketball fan or not, here's guessing that a good many didn't have to look up Kobe on Google when they turned on a TV Sunday or, like me, got the news by phone.
The tragic death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash in California, claiming the life of one of his four children and seven other passengers, affected many in and out of sports.
To the millions Bryant inspired in or out of the sports arena, former pro basketball player Jalen Rose might have said it best: "There were so many years left for Kobe Bryant to give the world."
To think, he might have run for president of the United States. Donald Trump, in office now, and Barack Obama, his predecessor, were among the celebrities sending condolences. Anyone who can cross political lines these days must be special indeed.
He might have become the mayor of Los Angeles, which adored Bryant athletically and respected him professionally after retiring from basketball.
He might have become the NBA commissioner, currently Adam Silver, who on Sunday said Bryant "showed us what is possible when remarkable talent blends with an absolute devotion to winning."
He might have won a second Oscar to go with his two U.S. Olympic gold medals and five NBA championships. Winning an Academy Award goes high in anyone's obituary.
He might have coached, even owned, the Los Angeles Lakers, the sports franchise that he put on his shoulders for 20 seasons. Magic Johnson, whom some might think worthy of the distinction that he offered Bryant, called Kobe "the greatest Laker of all time."
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, another Laker GOAT candidate, said "I'll remember him as a man, much more as an athlete." Jerry West, up there with Magic and Kareem on the Lakers' Mount Rushmore, said Bryant, in his 41 years, "left the world a better place." That's from the Big Fellow and the Logo, both of whom know a few things, like the insurance guy on TV, because they've seen a few things.
The 24-second clock that is life ran out on Kobe Bryant when en route to a basketball practice at Bryant's Mamba Academy in Thousand Oaks, Calif. I cannot remember a similar outpouring of grief since that for Princess Diana in 1997 and ex-Beatle John Lennon in 1980.
Kobe's death comes on top of that of longtime NBA Commissioner David Stern, both greatly responsible for professional basketball becoming a global sport. Two days before Bryant's death, the Charlotte Hornets and Milwaukee Bucks played the first professional basketball game in France.
Though retired four years from basketball, Bryant remained in the news to the end.
Hollywood, which can spot a phony instantly, fleshed out Kobe's trophy chest with an Oscar in 2018 for the animated short "Dear Basketball." His multimedia production company Granity Studios turned out projects like "Detail," an ESPN+ series about NBA playoff performances. Bryant wrote, produced and hosted the program, which the Los Angeles Times said "was intended to teach basketball to others in the same style that legendary NBA assistant Tex Winter once taught him.
"If this show existed when I was 11 or 12 years old, I believe by the age of 21, 22, I would have been a much better basketball player," Bryant told the Times in 2018. "It's the grand hope of making basketball better."
Bryant gave back to the sport that made him internationally famous. He may be more genuinely liked than Michael Jordan, basketball's greatest star, but not necessarily someone, according to reports, you would want as a teammate. Whereas Jordan, a bigger star in the NBA than in college at North Carolina, played like he was mad at the world for getting cut from his high-school basketball team, Bryant did it all with a smile.
He is one of the two most famous NBA players from No College. Wouldn't you know it: The other guy, LeBron James, on Saturday night passed Bryant for third place on the NBA career scoring list. (Of his two biggest sports idols, LeBron said, "All I ever wanted to do was make Jordan and Bryant proud.")
Bryant continued the tradition of Laker greatness dating to the club's George Mikan era in Minneapolis-St. Paul. West, whose likeness can be seen in silhouette on the NBA logo, helped his former team once again when, as the Lakers' general manager, he steered Bryant (son of an NBA player of the 1970s) to LA out of a New Jersey high school in 1996. Kids his age in the 1960s often went to Vietnam against their will. As Chris Connelly told ABC News in a one-hour primetime special Sunday, "He was 17 years old and drafted by the NBA."
He and Shaquille O'Neal, a playful giant at 7 feet, 1 inches and 325 pounds, led the Lakers to an NBA three-peat in 2000-2002. Black Mamba and Big Aristotle didn't always get along or with Phil Jackson, who coached Jordan to six NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls. But the fun is in the winning, it's said, and, as Dan Feldman wrote on NBCsports.com, "later in life, their bond -- built through shared experiences -- prevailed over distant grievances."
Lest anyone wonder about Shaq's feelings, O'Neal tweeted "IM SICK RIGHT NOW" in condolences "to the Bryant family and the families of the other passengers on board."
Like Jordan, another prince of midair, Bryant changed his game with age as injuries eroded his skills. No basketball player in memory had greater hang time on a jumper, which Jordan developed about the time Kobe started in the league. He got rapped a bit for 81 points -- with one assist -- against Toronto in 2006 but broke the Madison Square Garden record with 61 in 2009, that mark equaled last year by Houston's James Harden. Bryant hung 60 points on the Utah Jazz in his NBA finale, making almost as many headlines April 23, 2017, as the Golden State Warriors with a record 73rd regular-season victory.
"You felt it every single time you were watching him. You were watching theatre," said ESPN celebrity Michael Wilbon. "Michael (Jordan) had it. Kobe had it."
That said, the Kobe Bryant story is not complete without a story that put him on newspaper front pages. Kobe, writes a CNN reporter on Twitter, faced a "very credible rape accusation" stemming from a 2003 incident. Bryant denied attacking a 19-year-old employee at a Colorado resort, saying the two had consensual sex, and the charge eventually was dropped. Later, a settlement was made out of court.
Some will dismiss Bryant as another fawned-over athlete beating the system. Others will remember him for basketball only or working on his second act, something author F. Scott Fitzgerald famously considered impossible in American life.
We never got to see Kobe Bryant grow old. But watching a former sports hero become a family man and world-wide celebrity, even an Oscar winner, was enough, I guess. God, it is said, only picks the choicest fruit to harvest.
It is said that no one should ever bury a spouse or a child. With Kobe and 13-year-old daughter Gianna on that helicopter Sunday, Vanessa Bryant must do both.
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