- Monday, January 27, 2020

It’s a stark reminder that athletes burn bright and flame out fast that Kobe Bryant was only 41 years old when he died in a helicopter crash on Sunday morning. It seems almost unbelievable that somebody so accomplished could have been so young.

Bryant, of course, was a fixture of the American sports establishment for nearly a quarter century — from when he stormed into the NBA at 18 years old, through his remarkable two-decade career with the Los Angeles Lakers, where he won an astonishing five championship rings, to his nascent retirement, where he was dabbling, with success, in books, movies and other artistic pursuits. He did all that, and yet was only 41 when he died. Tragically, he perished alongside his 13-year-old daughter (and seven others). Bryant was notable for the way he doted on his four little girls. He was also a famous booster of women’s sports, including the WNBA.

The reaction to Kobe Bryant’s death was profound across the land. Everyone from presidents to pop stars to, of course, athletes, expressed their shock and sorrow. It seemed genuine. Quite spontaneously, a crowd formed outside the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles where Bryant had dominated as a shooting guard for all those years. At NBA games across the country, visibly choked up players struggled to compete.

It’s hard to conceive of the death of a prominent American from any other realm of life that would have occasioned such mass — indeed, nearly universal — sorrow. Americans are increasingly siloed and divided. Mass market television is a thing of the past — people tune into “narrowcasts” on Netflix and HBO rather than the broadcast hits of yore. Streaming services like Spotify and the hyper-targeted stations of satellite radio have put paid to the notion of songs that just about everybody knows. Even literary superstars like Stephen King only reach a small percentage of Americans.

And politics, of course, are utterly riven. Why, in today’s climate, the death of a bona fide hero like John McCain does not engender the universal sympathy it at one point might have — and should have. McCain was a genuinely admirable American, yet his death brought on so much partisan sniping and backbiting.

Sports, in other words, has become one of the last great unifiers of American life. Only figures with names like Woods, Jeter, Brady, and Bryant have an emotional hold over Americans that is both deep and wide. This is a fragile situation — and scandals like the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing threaten it — and one that should be guarded zealously. The United States is not a country defined by ethnicity, language or creed. We need to hold onto whatever universal institutions we still have.

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