The Bill Simmons Podcast - RIP, Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: January 26, 2020

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan remember the life of Kobe Bryant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, we're taping this on a Sunday afternoon. We're in Utah. I am here with Chris Ryan. We're doing some stuff for Sundance. And unexpectedly and tragically, this is the saddest NBA day ever. Kobe Bryant passed away. Helicopter crash. Saw the parentheses when you watch the TV and it says to Kobe Bryant, 1978 to 2020.

It's just like, what the hell is going on? I can't, other than magic getting HIV, I can't remember being this shocked by anything that happened in sports. And obviously this is worse because Kobe passed away. But Chris, I mean, where do we even start? Yeah. I mean, obviously I'm like sick to my stomach over this. It's somebody that I was just texting with, Ant Greenwald, who I do the pod with. And he actually put it best. He's like, we saw his entire life.

You know, like he is the definitive player of like my adult life. I watched him from right when I graduated high school till right when I moved to Los Angeles. And it's even before his NBA career, you had an awareness of him coming into the league. He felt like this kind of like prodigal figure. And it's just, it's hard to make sense of. It's hard to make sense of the loss of life.

It's just such a tragic, tragic incident with his daughter and with his daughter's teammate and their parent on the helicopter. It's just, it's so awful. I had the same thought about, I feel like we've known him, probably started hearing about him when he was maybe a junior in high school.

Yeah. And his entire career spanned basically the entire internet and how it intersected with basketball in all these different ways. But you think like he joins the league in 96. That's right when most people have a email. Yeah.

And then hits all these checkpoints that he's a part of. You're talking about early internet. Then you're talking about early days at ESPN.com and all those sites and then YouTube in 2006. And then Twitter comes and Instagram and he's there every step of the way and becomes the defining guy of his generation and one of the top 10 players of all time and I think you know the obviously I have a 14 year old

daughter and that part really hits on the hardest for me is with his 13 year old daughter that he was close to and was at games and all that stuff but um I was really interested to see what was going to happen the next 40 years of his life. I got to say, like last night, I hope this doesn't sound inappropriate, but last night a bunch of us were out for dinner and the Sixers and the Lakers had played earlier. And we were at this bar and SportsCenter had come on and I was like, okay, they're going to show the Sixers-Lakers highlight package.

And instead they led with a package of LeBron passing Kobe. And I was like, I can't believe this guy at 42 is still making me mad because somehow he's like blocking the Sixers or whatever from their moment in the spotlight. But that was the thing about Kobe. He engaged you on an emotional level the way like very few athletes do.

You can respect athletes. You can fear athletes. You can hate athletes. Kobe had the ability to trigger all of those emotions in me. Like I loathed him, I respected him, I loved him, I hated him. You know, it's like that kind of thing is just such a rare quality, not only in athletes, but in any kind of public figure.

And I think as we look at wherever his life was going to go and now we'll never know, but he had this ability to stick around and stay relevant when he wasn't playing that is a really hard thing to do because it's not like he was on nba countdown or on the inside the nba show or stuff like that he really was determined to forge his own way and even the tv thing that he did um that was called detail and he has been plus yeah because he didn't want to do a typical studio show he wanted to do this whole thing that he conceived himself. And, uh,

you know, he just didn't want to do it conventionally. He was starting. It seems like he was flying to the Mamba Academy, this Academy. He started in thousand oaks, but he was doing all of this stuff, right.

He's making content. He's making a children's podcast. And I just thought it was really interesting. I didn't necessarily think all of it was, you know, was working in the best way, but all of it was fascinating and kind of cool that he was doing it. And, um, I don't know, it's, it's just, it's, it feels like a crater. His was, uh, watching him over the course of the last 20 some odd years, it was really, you felt like you were living, you were watching somebody who was very aware

of the story that they were writing. Like he was a post-Jordan player and he was playing in a world where he was like, I have to be better than this guy or everything I do has to match what this guy did. And that's really what we want from our public figures and our athletes is to like have this sense of historical significance and context. Like they are telling the next chapter of a story and yeah,

you're right. Like we definitely had some laughs at the expense of the detail, like for sure. But he always was, he really always marched to the beat of his own drum. Like he always did what he wanted to do and he was never kind of ashamed of who he was and the kinds of things that were in his head i mean everything from the way he would kind of like be pretty open about the fact that he spoke several

languages or the way that he would dress the way he dressed or the way he talked the way he talked or the way he thought about the game in ways that were like almost corny, you know, like don't take it so seriously, dude. You know, I think that that often rubbed people the wrong way. And it was, it was a really single-minded, um, pursuit of excellence. And it was interesting because like in the last couple of years, it felt like all that competitive energy and all this stuff that you put into being the best basketball player you could possibly be and being the greatest champion he could possibly be was getting dispersed. It was going to all these different directions. And the, you know, I don't, I think that one of the most touching things was it was obviously was putting a lot of energy and thoughtfulness and care and attention into being a father, which was really as a public figure was pretty moving.

He started to think about his impact and his legacy. I feel like when, when they got Gasol and they were trying to make the finals and, and, you know, he was able to make the finals three years in a row, he wins two titles. And it seemed like around 2010, 11 ish, he started to give more of himself out there and to try to change the narrative of what his career was and to reach out to other people who had influence, whether it was reporters or columnists or people on TV. And he became much more accessible. I remember he, I don't even know if I ever told the story. He, I wrote this piece about leadership and Bill Russell, I think, when I was on Countdown.

So I'm going to say it's like the 2012-13 season. The Grantland era, yeah. Do you know this story? Did I ever tell you this story? I don't know. And I got this text on a Friday night. And it was like, hey, it's Kobe. I want to talk.

And I'm like, ha ha, bullshit. Right. This is Jacoby or something. Yeah, I was like, stop. There's some number I didn't recognize. And I was like, yeah, how do I know you're Kobe? And he had some response. I don't remember exactly what it was,

but it was something like, of course it's me, you Boston dickhead or something. Call me. And my wife and I were about to go to, I think something like Christmas party or Valentine's Day party or something, call me. And my wife and I were about to go to, I think something like Christmas party or Valentine's day party or something. And, and he called and he wanted to talk about leadership because he was obsessed with it. And he had been reading all these different books and he was really interested in Bill Russell. And we ended up talking for like 20, 25, 30 minutes about it. And I had never talked to him in my life until that point.

And he had all these thoughts about the guys of that gen, the younger guys, like the Katie Westbrook generation, things like that. And we had a good talk. And then a couple of weeks later, I texted him and I was like, hey, I want to write about our conversation because I really think people think it's interesting. And he was like, no, that was off the record. You'll never write about that.

And I was like, okay, that was it. I respected it. But I think he was one of those guys. He was in constant search of information, philosophy. He talked to all types of people from all types of not just sports, but business. And he was one of the first athletes who really dove into the whole business side and talked to all types of people, all types of thinkers. And he was just a really curious guy. Yeah. And I think, uh, I think that'll come out over these next few days is the amount of people that he knew and talked to and kind of tried to get information from. Yeah. It's interesting. Cause like we're, we're recording this right now and we're, we're not in LA, but I can see from my Twitter feed and just texting with people like,

you know, this is going to be a pretty significant loss for the Los Angeles community. I mean, I don't think I understood that even as a Philadelphian, like I didn't, I didn't really understand Kobe's kind of iconic status the way that I think I will now. And I mean, I obviously have since I moved to Los Angeles, but you can't really understate that there... Well, you can't describe it to the people listening who... I felt the same way I moved there in 02. He was so beloved. I'd never seen anything like it. In some ways, he's bigger than the Lakers. You know what I mean? There are people who are Kobe fans, not Lakers fans. Well well and I think after he had the uh the Colorado thing and nationally became villainized in some

ways and I think it definitely turned into an us versus them thing with the Laker fans and he was their guy from that point on where it was like we're no this is our guy we're not giving up on this one and then as his career started to turn, they loved him the most. And the Kobe versus Magic thing, I wasn't here when Magic played, and I think they love Magic the same way as a player. The Kobe thing resonated in, it felt like, a more profound way. Yeah, I mean, he was like a messiah to them. You know what I mean?

He really was. I think he was someone that, the first time since magic and maybe in the same way, the same way I was talking about how Kobe understood greatness in a post Jordan era, Kobe understood Lakerdom in a post magic era. Like he understood what that could mean to be a Laker and to be a champion Laker. And I think that he was a very fierce protector of those values, you know, sometimes to the detriment of the Lakers themselves, I would imagine,

you know, but saw himself as completely intertwined with the Lakers legacy. And it was, you know, it's, it's, it's such a crazy story to think about this kid who, I mean,

you would probably remember this better than i was because i was still in high school but like the way he basically plots his course to the lakers instead of the hornets right the hornets trading that draft pick for devach and if devach you know devach was like threatening to retire remember that yeah like in that whole thing and but there's everything you read about kobe from from that time even though it's not very long ago it feels like you're watching a western or reading a comic book, you know, like Kobe destroying Michael Cooper in workouts or Kobe, you know, being terrible in his first playoffs or whatever. You know, it's just like all these stories that like, they don't feel like you're like reading

about them in like any kind of like contemporary setting. They feel like they're almost like a superhero origin story or something. That was the first year I had my own website. He was, I think it was his second year, which it was his breakout year. And he was just, you know, he's in there and so is Iverson. And it feels in Jordan, you can start to see the tail end of his career. And you could feel, all right, there's really something here. I don't know if this is the next MJ, but all the people who love basketball were like,

this might be the guy. And there were these little checkpoint moments and he got voted into the All-Star game. And then he got to play MJ in the All-Star game. And I remember there was a Lakers-Bulls national game. And it was all about, could this be the successor we were looking for? And it was up and down the next couple of years. And it really wasn't until game four, the 2000 finals against Indiana, Shaq fouls out, Kobe takes over in overtime. And they were like, yes. And then the next eight years, pretty tumultuous. And they win some titles. He shoots himself out of a title. He has some off-court stuff. And for the kind of basketball that I loved, I didn't like the direction of the hero ball style. And really you know i was really protective of

the old way of playing and you know he's a laker i'm a south african all that stuff so looking for any reason to go glass half empty on whatever we're going with kobe are we sure he's good and it wasn't until after i wrote my book and then i started doing more media stuff and doing countdown and just talking to more athletes, I really realized I needed to really understand basketball more. I want to talk to as many people as possible. I started having people on my podcast. And over and over again, it was the same thing.

His peers and the people that came before him really respected him and really felt like he was one of the best guys. And at some point, I just realized like, man, I'm just looking at this one wrong. This is an L for me. Yeah. Because everybody who goes against him is like, this is either the best player I've ever played against

or one of the best players I've ever played against. I'll tell you, and you can see it today in the tributes, which are just starting to trickle out really. But one thing in my experience of just, since I moved to LA and covering the league a little bit more professionally is like the people who love Kobe the most are other players. And that should tell you something, you know, and not only because I think that, you know, he obviously had his rivalries and his conflicts with other players, but especially for a younger generation of players, I think they looked up to him like a god,

you know, and he actually was pretty benevolent with his time and, and his sort of advice and his, and it, and you know, it probably in some ways, like in a kind of, you know, like condescending way,

like here's what you have to do young, but I think like you see like guys like Trey young and John Morant, like pretty young dudes who are like, well, those are two generations removed now because the Durant-Westbrook generation were like the sons of Kobe. Yes. And he gets to play with them in 08 and 2012 in the Olympics and is able, in 08, he has

a profound effect on Wade and LeBron and Bosh and Carmelo. If you go back and you look at all their stats, I'm doing this off the top of my head in the 08-09 season, after they play with him in the Olympics, all of them have the best years of their career. Now you could say part of that had to be they're maturing and they're hitting the point where you're hitting your NBA prime, right?

But on the other hand, the stuff they learned from him, they've all talked about it. The work ethic he had, he was just at a whole other level than they were. And I think all of them realized, Oh shit. Yeah.

You can only get so far by being good. Yeah. Oh, so that's what I have to do. So he passed that along and then, and I think he had the biggest impact on Wade. Cause Wade had by far the best year of his career next year. But,

and then in 2012, same thing. That's a younger team. That's the London games. That has LeBron, Durant, Westbrook, Chris Paul, Darren Williams. Iguodala on that team? Iguodala, that whole generation. And Kobe at that point, he's climbed the mountain already.

He's won five titles. He's passed his prime. He's settled into this old school gunslinger version of himself and was just on another level. I don't even think he stayed at the same hotel with those guys. Cause he was like just more famous than everybody, you know? And he's on a team with LeBron, but he was, he was the guy and he was the guy.

I think it's really important to have the measuring stick guys, especially in the NBA, where it's like, you're trying to make it. And LeBron became that guy, right? Kobe gave Kobe passed the torch to LeBron, and now it's like everybody's trying to get by LeBron. And then it became the Currys Warriors teams for a couple years. And now we're in this no man's land league where there's, I'm not sure, who do you measure yourself against?

I guess LeBron? Yeah. But Kobe was that guy for a long time, and that was what he really wanted too. He wanted that for years. He wanted to be that guy that everybody points to. I mean, then that's what makes the Pau Gasol championships in some ways, maybe not more impressive than the three-peat,

but it's certainly a testament to his drive to recreate a team after Shaq. The 2000, the second title he won with Gasol is a really impressive title because he's pretty banged up at that point, you know, and they, both of those years, he was just playing a ton of minutes.

And also he played the Olympics and three straight finals, all that stuff. And was also at a, at a point in his career where like, you think about Dwayne Wade, who, if you match up Wade versus Kobe, Kobe had the more titles because he was with Shaq, but the first, I don't know, eight years of their career,

pretty similar. You throw out the first two Kobe post-high school years, and then Kobe was able to just maintain a prime for another five years. Well, because he had like, I mean, Wade did this too, but he was able to create a completely new image of himself. But Wade couldn't totally do it though. Yeah.

It was hard for him to turn into like- Wade peaked 11, 12, probably 2011 was his last year where he was like a top three, top four guy. Uh-huh. And then he started, because that's what happens when you've been in the NBA for 10 years. Kobe reinvents himself 08, 09, 10, 11, even 12, and has this whole second act. And that's what, when I was doing my book and trying to figure out this stuff, that's what separates him historically. And that's why he's a top 10 player ever because of that second wave of his prime. It's like, I don't know that we'll, I mean, maybe we will, but if the Warriors couldn't do a three-peat, I don't know if we'll ever see another team do it. Yeah.

Which makes that, that Lakers three-peat so significant. You know, it's funny, you were saying in the beginning about how Kobe kind of like his playing career in the NBA is pretty much also tracks alongside the evolution of the internet and the emergence of the internet

being the primary way we communicate and consume information um but those lakers teams to me still have like that feels like a different sport it feels like a different a different time you know what i mean like those lakers teams felt like with kobe and yeah that felt that that that felt like uh the way kids probably talk about the 1927 yankees you know what i mean like i remember i remember the we're gonna cut your heart out thing in the 2001 finals and just be like he's he means it he's gonna do it like he's hold a sixers fan we're gonna cut your heart out and they boot him at the all-star game in philly like years later they hadn't forgiven him you know and it was like that's that's what he that was that was what the kind of the kind of guy he was. He would tell

his hometown fans, I am going to cut your heart out. That's the way he saw the game. It was a zero-sum game. I remember 08 Finals, Celtics win that Finals. Kobe's team, Bynum was hurt.

Lada, Vlad, Randmanovich, they were like a guy short. The Celtics were the best team that year. And they win game one. It's the Paul Pierce wheelchair game. And then game two, the Celts are controlling the whole game. And I'm doing this off the top of my head. I'm sorry.

I think we're up like I say we like I'm on the team. I think we're up like 15, 17 points. I'm at the game. This is in Boston. like five six minutes left and Kobe just locks in and just basically takes on our entire team and I don't remember what the stats were but I just remember the feeling I think I wrote a piece about it too. The truly, truly great players, the feeling of being in the building

and like the helplessness that sets in where you're like, oh my God, this guy's doing whatever we want. We cannot stop him. That's why I think over everything else, he was so revered as a basketball player because so few guys could get to that specific point. Even LeBron, it took LeBron forever,

really till the 2012 Boston game six to get to a point like that, where he's like, I'm going to just rip everybody's heart out. I don't care that I'm on the road. And so when I think of him as a basketball player, like I, they weirdly, that's the game I would remember first. Then I read the 81 point game. That was so weird. I watched it with my dad. That was surreal. It was like his teammates, he was like a tennis player almost. He had no teammates. He's just like, I'm just doing this.

You remember the good with the bad. I remember him. I remember the not passing game against Phoenix, right? Right. Or no, the not shooting game against Phoenix. Game seven, I was six. Yeah, I'm not shooting. So what the fuck is going on? He's like, here's how bad my teammates are.

Watch this. Watch what happens when I let them. Because he knew he was out. Not on like a Wednesday night. It was like, here's how bad my teammates are. Watch this. Watch what happens when I let them. Because he knew he was out. Not on like a Wednesday night. It was like, this was serious. This was serious basketball. This was playoffs. Yeah, he had some of the more petulant moments we had.

I think the fact that he was able to have that post-prime, second-prime, and now LeBron's able to do it too. He just wouldn't allow anything less but you have to like I kind of like there's no point in comparing the two because it's apples to oranges but LeBron has managed to

find a second and somewhat third maybe you can call it third prime but he's managed to find that this through movement through like kind of never getting too inert in one place if the roster isn't working out you can always engineer something and Kobe obviously like through movement, through never getting too inert in one place. If the roster isn't working out, you can always engineer something.

And Kobe, obviously, there was trade demands in Kobe's career. There was failed super teams in Kobe's career. There were breakups in Kobe's career. There were a lot of scandals. But he was a Laker for life. He did that all on one team, which is kind of incomprehensible

now. And really got a full kick out of it too. I think he pretty early on wanted to go down as the greatest Laker ever. Whether that happened is a really good argument.

I still think Magic, I still think Magic was slightly better, but Kobe's career was longer. Kareem was the best Laker ever but wasn't on the Lakers for the first half of his career basically so it's like there's no right answer

basically depends on what you want but I think Kobe probably went down as the most memorable Laker ever like the beginning middle end of his career and how long it was and how many generations it crossed. And you think all the people that are so sad today and the age ranges of it.

And you have 12-year-olds who liked him just because of YouTube videos and they didn't even see him play. They just, they follow him on Instagram and they're just kind of into him and they weren't even there. It kind of feels bigger than basketball. I mean, it feels like more like Prince, you know? Yeah. It feels, and, and kind of, you think about the people, I know that this is a

completely useless metric, but there is something weird about when somebody passes into the one name category. Yeah. Prince, Bowie, Kobe. Kobe that happened right away. Yeah. And this doesn't feel like something that's going to, people are going to get over anytime soon. I'm kind of. Well, I said at the top that it was the saddest NBA day ever, which is true. It's in the running for saddest sports days ever.

Even before we popped on as SportsCenter, they had Stephen A on and he just looked like. Yeah. Rachel looked like she'd been hit by a train. This guy was in a lot of people's lives. He was around, too. Kobe was at Staples. There were a lot of events in Los Angeles that he participated in.

He was a pretty big ambassador for the game. Probably would have been an all-star in Chicago. I don't know for sure. He was very present. He seemed like he was a big fixture in the league right now. What do you think is going to... They're playing the Raptors. The Raptors are playing. I think the Spurs are playing right now.

I think... We're doing this mid-afternoon on a Sunday. I think... There's never really been a sports death like this. Yeah, they're in uncharted territory. Yeah. I almost don't know how it's going to play out, but I could see the Staples Center becoming... A shrine.

Yeah, but beyond a shrine. I don't even really know what to expect. And I don't know what to expect with these next few days. Clippers-Lakers is Tuesday. Right. It's supposed to be. I don't know if they're going to play that game. I don't know what to expect in general with all this stuff.

And then you think, you know, I've been working on this book of basketball where we've been going backwards and really diving in through the stuff of the century. We haven't done a Kobe episode yet, but he's been in these different things. The guy was in an unbelievable amount

of just basketball history really since 2000. He was in one, two, I think he was in seven finals. He went against every relevant guy in the last 25 years and had a bunch of different iconic moments and his name kept popping up after he finished playing. And now all that stuff is a completely different filter.

And this happened with Magic too. And Magic didn't die in 91, but we all, part of what was so horrible about that day and finding out that he had HIV was, it just was a death sentence in 1991. You're just like, oh, he's going to be dead in a year. And it changed the way you remember those Laker things. Fortunately for us, Magic stuck around

and is still healthy all these years later. It didn't have that shadow when you watch those old games. You feel kind of weird. And I don't know how that part plays out. Yeah, I don't know what it's going to be like to watch Kobe mixtapes now. I saw a couple of them kind of on the front page of YouTube because they're obviously getting smashed right now.

People are watching a lot of stuff. And I don't know what it's going to be like to go revisit those games because so much of those games, they weren't... The thing that was kind of cool about him was that they weren't museum pieces. They were really weird. They were gunslinger games. He was a gunner and he would trash talk people and he would bully people. But the irony, one of the most memorable Kobe games was six for 24.

Yeah. And he stinks for three quarters and almost shoots him out of it. And then in the fourth quarter, he writes the ship and makes him, you know, there's a play. I just recently watched that game. They're up three. Somebody misses. The ball gets bounced out.

Kobe gets a rebound. He's at the foul line. He's exhausted. There's probably 40 seconds left. And he's just like, I'm going to the basket. I am going into this sea of bodies as hard as I can. I might get decapitated. I don't care.

I'm getting a foul. Back when guys still decapitate you. And he goes in. In that game, that's a great game to rewatch because it's really old school. The basketball is different now. That game is all about the six feet around the rim and the paint and just this battle. It's like football.

And Kobe just goes flying in there like a batting ram. Unclear whether it was a charge or a foul. Gets the foul because he's Kobe. It was the right move. It was smart. But he goes flying into Rasheed Wallace like a locomotive. And you know, I just to me, that's the basketball

stuff I remember with him. He was a badass. And a really good all-around player and a reasonable facsimile of Jordan. I don't think he was as good as Jordan but he's as close as we're going to get probably. Yeah. The only, the last thing and then we'll go because I don't want to keep this going too long because but he's as close as we're going to get probably yeah the only

the last thing and then we'll go because I don't want to keep this going too long because it's still pretty fresh but I really feel bad

for the Laker fans I you know sports it's it's games it's stupid we

we look at this all the time and wonder why we give a shit and why we're watching these random games in January you're watching Philly Atlanta 90 better things you could do but something fundamentally

about you just love basketball you just want to watch these games and day in day out these people are in your life and you know I think for the Laker fans he's the most popular Laker him versus magic. I don't know, but he's definitely up there and, you know, they, they're just never going to be the same. I don't, I don't even think like for Boston athletes, I guess,

Brady, but in, in, for, for us, we, the Celtic, probably Larry Bird. But Bird we had for 11 years and then he moved to Indiana and it wasn't like the Kobe thing. Kobe played two decades. He stayed in LA. He goes to the games. It was a huge...

I always thought he was going to be the guy that replaced Nicholson in the seats. He was on his way. He was on his way. I don't really know if like just as a boston fan i don't know if we had an athlete quite like that that was so universally belonged to sure every city has something like that whether it's roberto clemente or jerome brown or you know what i mean like right everybody's got somebody that they've lost that you figure you feel like the

sports landscape of your city was never the same after that maybe, but this is one where it feels like the sports landscape of every city won't be the same after this. I loved rooting against him. I respected the hell out of him. Had good interactions with him. Thought he was interesting to talk to. And a really curious guy. And I thought, I think maybe that's something that a lot of people didn't realize.

He was genuinely interested in a lot of things and this day sucks. Yeah. He'll be missed. Thanks for listening. We'll we'll be back with some more podcasts later in the week. We just wanted to get this one up in the books. Sorry to all Laker fans out there. Condolences to the Brian family and the extended family and everybody that loved him. And we'll be back later in the books. Sorry to all the Laker fans out there. Condolences to the Bryant family

and the extended family and everybody that loved them. And we'll be back later in the week.