Learning to Grieve in the World of Sports
Tragedy can always happen in sports entertainment but after the sorrow there must always come the relief and celebration of life
Sports is the escapism of everyday life.
That’s a quote I would often hear whenever people talk about the nature of sports. Yes, it is primarily competition of the most talented athletes but it is also an entertainment industry driven by advertisers, media personnel, and of course fandom. There is something that draws us in whenever we follow our favorite sports. Whether it’s football, basketball, soccer, hockey, baseball, tennis, golf, etc. there is always some ridiculous, over-the-top scenario that makes us go “WOAH” every single time we see it live.
The “real world,” on the other hand, isn’t that exciting. In fact, it can be painfully boring or sometimes just plain painful.
What I mean when I say “the real world” I’m referencing the everyday, mundane nature of our existence. We either go to work, school, or in our homes and do our daily tasks. We draft memos, write thesis papers, clean our homes, or cook food. In other words, we do the boring stuff. I’m not sure flipping a pancake is as exciting as say “dropping 30 points in a single half” of a basketball game.
There’s also the nature of “mortality” in the “real world.”
We often have to accept the fact that at any given moment our time in this world could be up. We don’t know when we will go. It could happen in a decade, five years, a year, next month, or even tomorrow. Death is inevitable. Eventually, we all know we have to pass at some point. All things must come to an end. It’s part of the cycle of existence.
So what happens when the “real world” collides with the “sports world?”
It’s a weird feeling when you have to deal with the fact that you can’t partake in a fantasy anymore when something immensely important happens in the “sports world.” The entertainment is no longer present and the painful reality plays very real in that fictionalized “sports reality” we try to immerse ourselves in. It is especially poignant when an important figure or people we may not even know pass away and it affects that entertainment industry. We are aware of the real world tragedies that happen and they don’t make it any less important but that fear of mortality and the sorrow of realizing people have lost loved ones can hit you hard and make you somber and depressed. Think about how the world felt when the plane crash of Southern Airways Flight 932 happened and everybody learned about the deaths of all those on board including the Marshall Thundering Herd football team. That was a tragic event and even if you didn’t personally know the people on board it hits you hard because as a sports fan you’ve watched those players play and immersed yourself in the world of watching their athleticism on display and marveled at their achievements. So when they died it felt like someone you did know pass away and the tragedy strikes home and you feel that immense sorrow.
I personally cannot relate to that terrible moment since I was never born around the time the crash happened. From personal experience, a tragedy similar has happened to me at least three times. One of them was today and it was a desolating moment I was praying to God it wasn’t real.
Sports is the escapism of everyday life.
That’s what I try to mutter to myself every single time the news showed a clip of Kobe Bean Bryant. I didn’t want to accept the fact that the legendary, larger-than-life athlete, the Black Mamba, the man who wore both #8 AND #24 in the NBA, and had both jerseys retired by the same team he played for his entire life passed away along with his daughter Gianna “Gigi” Bryant. It was right at the cusp of him celebrating his former rival, good friend, and supposed heir to the title as “next Laker great” LeBron James passing his record as leading NBA scorer in history. It was a wonderful moment that many fans (myself included) got to watch this past Saturday in Bryant’s hometown in Philadelphia no less when the Lakers played against the 76ers.
Bryant seemed to have everything going well for him. His daughter was primed to follow his footsteps in the world of basketball and everyone was excited at the idea of her possibly taking the sports world by storm with some fans even started nicknaming her “Mambacita” or “Lady Mamba.” He had another child with his wife last year. His business entity was continuing to grow. He provided guidance to young players. He continued his philanthropy. He was the only NBA athlete to be primed ready to enter the Hall of Fame with NBA Championships, Finals MVP awards, MVP awards, Olympic Gold Medals, and a freaking Oscar for his documentary. It looked like the Black Mamba had more to give to this world.
So imagine how it feels like multiple blank pages in a long book when you discover that he won’t be filling those pages out anytime soon. And he won’t see his daughter emerge as a WNBA great or watch any of his other daughters live their lives. It was cut short tragically and it’s painful to bare.
But as always, I repeat the same line to make myself feel better.
Sports is the escapism of everyday life.
I’ve been a fan of basketball ever since I was six years old. I was born in New York City and spent part of my life there before moving to New Jersey. Of course, being a first generation Ghanaian-American who happens to be a New Yorker, I grew up watching the New York Knicks. They were my family’s favorite team and their fandom rubbed off on me. I’ll never forget the first time I jumped at the excitement of shooting guard John Starks posterizing Horace Grant and Michael Jordan (HE DID AND I’M STICKING TO IT! DON’T ARGUE!) at the Eastern Conference Finals against the Chicago Bulls. I also marveled at the high flying athleticism of “Air Jordan” and the quickness of Scottie Pippen. These guys were phenomenal and I would play in my backyard attempting to mimic their every move. Basketball was ingrained in me and even though I never developed the talent of mastering the game, I loved the sport all the more the same.
I watched a lot of superstars come and go in this league all the time. Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Scottie Pippen, Isiah Thomas, Shaq O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Tim Duncan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Jason Kidd, Grant Hill, Dirk Nowitizki, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, Steve Nash, etc. I could spend hours and days upon talking all the great games and players I’ve witnessed. There were plenty that stuck with me till this day. Whenever I get bored, I watch old highlights and go like, “oh snap! I remember that! That was awesome when he did that!” There were plenty of players who I watched and never got bored with any of their games because something exciting was always going to happen when they played.
One of them was Kobe Bryant. And there I go feeling the tears again. I gotta say that old mantra again.
Sports is the escapism of everyday life.
I’m not sure that can work anymore. It’s been a day and I’m still grieving. And it’s not just for Kobe and his daughter, but for the other people who passed away on that unfortunate helicopter crash. It was a complete accident and it is still a bitter pill to swallow.
I mentioned earlier that two other events like Bryant’s death hit me in the core where I was somber and beside myself. One of them was Muhammad Ali, who passed away in 2016. The reality that the greatest boxer who ever lived has finally passed on struck me with sadness, especially when earlier that year I was at my grandmother’s funeral and I had to process a lot of grief and sorrow knowing that the family matriarch is no longer with us and that my family back in Ghana said that eventually my generation will have to continue that line and raise a new family that continues on like how she wanted. I felt like Ali probably wanted the same thing for his family.
Heck, one of his daughters, Laila Ali, became one of the best boxers in history just like her father and she retired and started a family and I’m sure he’s happy that she continued a legacy he always wanted. He got to live a full life and him passing on felt like a completion of that journey even when we weren’t ready to accept it.
The other tragic event was something similar to Bryant’s death. It was the death of an NBA player who died so young and so unexpectedly that it was such a downer I literally cried and wailed the same way I did when I found out that Kobe and his daughter died. It was Anthony Mason. Big Mase’s death was the last time an NBA player’s death hit me hard.
Mase died in 2015 and he was only 48 years old. He had congestive heart failure and suffered a fatal heart attack. His death shocked me because I was a huge fan of Mase. He wasn’t a well-known superstar like his teammate Patrick Ewing but he was a tough, blue-collar athlete who played hard and did his job whenever he was on the court. He was tough on defense and a decent scorer. His death was such a shock that I wasn’t even able to process during that time. Around that time, I was unemployed after being laid off at my job in Pennsylvania and I was already down in the dumps. Money was scarce and I had a lot of bills to pay and it wasn’t exactly easy. I was unhappy at home, constantly being hounded to find a job when it wasn’t happening fast enough. Then I had to deal with the fact that one of my favorite athletes passed away. It was a rough period in my life and I couldn’t help but cry endlessly because it was too much to bare.
So how does one “learn to grieve” when tragedy happens in sports?
The answer isn’t to look at sports as an escapism of everyday life. It’s to accept that tragedy can happen. It’s okay to grieve and cry in pain. More importantly, it’s okay to wallow in sorrow, but then accept the pain and move forward.
After watching the Knicks and Nets play basketball with the understanding of nobody wanting to either play the game, watch the game, or even broadcast the game as Mike Breen expressed before the tip off as he told the story of a cartoon done by Bill Gallo when Thurman Munson passed away, I realized that the players were still playing a game.
Breen was crying on air with Walt “Clyde” Frazier but they were still doing the play by play for the MSG broadcast. As if Kobe himself was egging us on from the heavens, we gotta move forward. Even though the game itself didn’t matter, it was important that we kept moving forward because knowing the competitive nature of Kobe Bryant, he wouldn’t want us to drown in sorrow over his passing.
After the game, I began to reflect on his life and began celebrating with tears in my eyes of the greatness and ridiculousness of Kobe Bryant. Whether it was his explosive match against the Portland Trailblazers in the 2000 Western Conference Finals match, or the “two-piece combo” he received from Chris Childs during his scuffle with the New York Knicks (still funny), the fact that a fan literally drove to another town to beat up another person in order to defend his legacy (ALSO VERY funny) or his legendary 81 point game against the Toronto Raptors (a fact that he supposedly STILL reminded Jalen Rose at every opportunity he could get), I realized that I had a lot of fun watching Kobe Bryant grow from a skinny teenager from Philly into an all time great. A true G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) that a lot of us witnessed.
I will also remember Bryant during some of his legendary duels with a lot of future NBA Hall of Famers like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire, Dirk Nowitizki, and man…the list just goes on. He had a LOT of great matches and Kobe rose to the challenge every single time.
Kobe was far from the perfect person though. I could easily bring up the incident in Colorado back in 2004 and it’s not something that should be wiped away from history because it is a part of his life just much as his achievements were. His flaws were very much a part of who he was but it wasn’t the only aspect of his life. There are people more qualified to talk about that than me so I won’t delve into it.
At the end of the day, we have to remember that as tragic as it was that Kobe, his daughter, and the other people in the crash didn’t make it, we can cry and embrace the sorrow and celebrate their lives the best we can. It doesn’t have to be now or even next week. Everyone processes grief in their own way. It literally took me at least two months to move forward over my grandmother’s passing. It took a month after Anthony Mason’s passing. I had to remember the good times I had with my grandma and recall the fun memories I had of watching Mason play bully ball during the 90’s era basketball. It can be said the same with the Black Mamba. I’ll always treasure the fun times I’ve had witnessing one of the greatest athletes to ever play the game of basketball.
As tears hit my keyboard as I write this little essay, I hope everyone can appreciate a life that Kobe Bryant led. It’s a reminder that life is precious and we should all cherish it. Yesterday evening I hugged my brother and told him I loved him as he replied he loved me back. We were both huge fans of Kobe Bryant and his death hit us hard. I’ll likely do the same thing to my little sister when I get the chance as well as my big sister who taught me the game of the basketball and introduced to the world of sports and players like Kobe Bryant. He was the competitive athlete personified. He was fierce but good-natured. He was a student but also a teacher. He was the hero and the villain. He was a son, a brother, a husband, and a father.
Rest in peace to Kobe, his daughter Gianna, John Altobelli, his wife, Keri and their daughter, Alyssa and the rest of those who died in the crash. My sincerest condolences to their families.
Kobe, thank you for a life well-lived.
Mamba Out.
