But I have mourned for public figures who died who i didn't know personally before so i get it. A part of you dies as well. Teenage me shed tears when the lead singers of my favorite bands died suddenly. I missed those guys because i felt deprived of the music they would've created if they lived. And these guys mostly killed themselves. Slow and not so slow suicide.

The listing of accomplishments and failings... that's what an outside observer can see. As fans you never really know the guy you root for. So you can only list the Pros/Cons that you're aware of. You don't know what is in their heart. You hear 'rape', and you assume the worst. And maybe 'the worst' is accurate. Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a lot of grey area we have no knowledge of. So why parrot these labels when you don't know the person?

If you know someone who is gone, there was no listing of their failings successes. Of if there were that wasn't what mattered about them. We don't miss the MVPs. We miss the person. And a person can't be reduced to a label that you don't even understand. Even if a guy dies because of a needle they stuck into themselves. Can you just call them a junkie? Reduce their humanity to their lowest moment? That would be wrong too. But you don't know them, you only know what the archtype of a junkie looks like and that lets you feel less remorse for them being gone.

My friend ultimately died because he used a dirty needle to shoot a drug into his veins that no one but him had any idea he was taking. Yeah i'm angry at him, but at the same time i can't be angry at him. Because I knew him. I could understand the desperation that led him there. He didn't die a junkie. He died my friend.

Kobe or __insert famous name here__ never have a relationship with the fans the same way we wish we could have a relationship with them. They're not really real people to us. We treat them as idols or archtypes and any failing we magnify because it shows them to be false idols. The irony is nobody is perfect we are all false idols. So we should'n't expect perfection from others.

Eli Manning just retired, told the fans he loves them and called the NY fans unique. A lot of fans are giving him grief for that. HE DIDN'T THANK US! They said. HE CALLED US UNIQUE (AKA CRAZY). They said. Forgetting the fact he said he loves them. Calebrities can never do enough to placate the fanatical observer. We are all fanatical observers.

So fanatical observers who are false idols judging celebrities to be false idols.... we're all just human. The failings and the successes are just noise. If you know someone closely you know not to listen to noise. You trust your feelings. None of us knew Kobe. Even from interviews or documentaries you never knew the man. To me he was just a man. Like David Stern. Like my friend. Was he blessed with otherworldly gifts? Yes. More blessed than most. He had a good life. A very very good life. Did he have moments of doubt and depression? I have no idea. I assume he did. As we all do. As my friend did. There is no happy way to die.

Sambakick wrote:Last month I lost a very close friend of mine. It was sudden as well. He was 37. So this Kobe news, and the Stern news before it was weird for me because i'm still very much mourning my friend, and i'm a little numb to other death right now.

Its really hard to remember and even harder to stay focused on, but we really only have today. Thanks for sharing and a dirty needle does nothing to diminish to times you shared, the bread you broke... all of it. Clearly he was hurting. 37 is just too short.

SupremeCommander wrote:

Welpee wrote:

jrodmc wrote:Lupica's piece I thought was pretty much along the lines of Nalod: "Just don't forget he was accused of rape!"

Well, the accusation has to be part of the Kobe narrative. No getting around that if you want to be honest. But nobody but Kobe and the victim know what really happened and without a conviction it is irresponsible for anyone to call him a rapist.

I just wish everyone could just bite their tongue for 72 hours or something reasonable? A wife just lost her husband and daughters their father.

We love our heroes even if we have to fabricate them.

Nalod wrote:As a “Christian”? Really Jrod, You pulling some “Church lady” on this?
I thought y’all were into forgiveness? Isn’t recognition of flaws part of that?
Kobe was no humanitarian or great human outside his craft. Part of his adoration is he grew from being an immature winnng sociopath prick to a balanced mature man. Part of it was his path that was not always admirable. I celebrate that as well. Not some fable the media will sell us. To ignore his flaws is to ignore perhaps his greatest achievement as a man. A champion on the court becomes a good man.

We love our heroes even if we have to fabricate them.

There is a time and a place for these concepts. Furthermore, these concepts are introspective. I.e. look in the mirror, not at others. Your confusion on these points is reasonable, just don’t try and wield these ideas as a weapon if you don’t understand them. It compounds the flaws in your arguments. Kobe was an archetype figure. His work ethic and competitiveness were beyond anything else I have seen. We choose to remember what we choose to remember. You have that choice as well. But, there is a time and a place. Kobe doesn’t need our forgiveness.

Nalod wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

Nalod wrote:As a “Christian”? Really Jrod, You pulling some “Church lady” on this?
I thought y’all were into forgiveness? Isn’t recognition of flaws part of that?
Kobe was no humanitarian or great human outside his craft. Part of his adoration is he grew from being an immature winnng sociopath prick to a balanced mature man. Part of it was his path that was not always admirable. I celebrate that as well. Not some fable the media will sell us. To ignore his flaws is to ignore perhaps his greatest achievement as a man. A champion on the court becomes a good man.

We love our heroes even if we have to fabricate them.

There is a time and a place for these concepts. Furthermore, these concepts are introspective. I.e. look in the mirror, not at others. Your confusion on these points is reasonable, just don’t try and wield these ideas as a weapon if you don’t understand them. It compounds the flaws in your arguments. Kobe was an archetype figure. His work ethic and competitiveness were beyond anything else I have seen. We choose to remember what we choose to remember. You have that choice as well. But, there is a time and a place. Kobe doesn’t need our forgiveness.

Well said. Point taken. Thank you.

+1 and 1
that was the gist of my post to begin with. Time and place. Like somewhere well after the first sentence.

Peace.

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/EasyStreetKeys/status/1221984963668729857

Tweet was deleted or there was problem with the URL:

https://twitter.com/lakers/status/1223454877814149121