• Accident: Kobe Bryant dies at 41

Michael Jordan left only one bad thing: for a few years everyone wanted to be like him, the famous Be like Mike of the commercials, and that condemned the NBA at a time of pacifier and tangerine escorts everywhere. Because nobody could be like Jordan. No one? Almost nobody. Out of all those unsuccessful attempts came a success story, a case that made all the bad copies worthwhile: from the immense shadow of Michael Jordan emerged Kobe Bryant . And the shadow he leaves today is as immense as that of his idol. In the authentic pantheon of the NBA there are no more than eight or ten players. Kobe is one of them. Put it in the position that everyone considers, but no one in their right mind will consider leaving him out. It is not a star, it is a god. It is something else.

Kobe was always different because several worlds that rarely converge came together. Extreme competitiveness as only someone born in Philadelphia, the city where sport never plays friendly, can have; European education after growing up in Italy; infinite capacity for the show as a good idol of Los Angeles and the Lakers. From those three universes a unique character emerged. One who never understood the playful sense of Shaquille basketball, no matter how useful it was to win: this is not a game. One with an almost Hollywood sense of the moment: a focus points at me, I fly. And one who concealed an educated, intelligent and educated person under his facade of an ariscoman. Pau Gasol knows better than anyone.

At the London Olympics, a fast train linked the Olympic ring with the city center. The platform was a whirlwind of hallucinated fans, clueless tourists and accelerated journalists. One afternoon, a woman with a baby carriage got stuck between the door and the chaos without anyone noticing. Only one passenger, already sitting in his seat and a few meters away, detected the problem. He got up in a hurry, stopped everyone, climbed the cart and, in the effort, lowered the hood of his sweatshirt. It was Kobe Bryant. While we were hallucinating, he devoted himself to making the baby's carantos and returned discreetly to his place. It's bullshit, but I remember it now and it saddens me even more.

The Kobe Bryant basketball legend had already done everything he had to do. His legacy was defined and was already eternal. But that Kobe, the one with the cart and the smile, had just begun to live for real. I don't know what basketball has done to fate, but it's undesirable.

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