Shooting For The Stars Kobe's Tragic Date With Kate

We mourn the loss of an NBA legend and his darling girl

- Megan McChesney

Kobe Bryant understood life is short. “Things change in the blink of an eye. People go to work and don’t come back. One minute they’re living and the next minute they’re not,” the basketball superstar wrote in an essay shortly after 9/11. Tragically his life, too, ended way too soon.

The sports legend had no idea when he boarded a helicopter with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and five other people last week that those were the last few moments of his life.

Ironically, Kobe, 41, had taken to using helicopters as a way to spend more time with his family and less time stuck in traffic, but ultimately it cost him all the time he had left in the world: as his chopper headed from Los Angeles to a basketball game west of the city, it hit early-morning fog and ploughed into a hillside, instantly killing everyone on board.

As news of the tragedy broke, ripples of grief spread around the world for the man who’d brought joy to millions and who seemed invincible.

Born in 1978 to NBA player Joe Bryant and his wife Pamela, Kobe was named after a type of steak that his parents had seen on a restaurant menu. At age three, he began playing basketball and showed such promise that the Charlotte Hornets drafted him straight out of high school.

Days later he was traded to the LA Lakers – becoming, at 18, the youngest player ever to start an NBA game – and for the next 20 seasons rose through the ranks to become one of the most celebrated players of all time.

And while he made scoring on the court look easy, he regularly arrived two hours early to practice to hit the gym. After his first season in the NBA, he even turned down a role in a Spike Lee movie in favour of more practice time.

Off court, his life was equally as colourful.