Kobe Bryant

Kobe Bryant, who made the leap directly from high school to a glittering 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers that established him as one of basketball’s all-time greats, was among nine people killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday January 26 2019 north of Los Angeles. Bryant was 41. The crash also killed Gianna Bryant, 13, the second oldest of Kobe Bryant’s four daughters with his wife, Vanessa. The son of the former N.B.A. player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. Bryant earned 18 All-Star selections, a regular-season Most Valuable Player Award in 2008 and two N.B.A. finals M.V.P. awards to go with his five championship rings and two Olympic gold medals. A sexual assault allegation against him in 2003 would change how many people saw Bryant, though he remained hugely popular among N.B.A. fans and especially Angelenos, for whom he increasingly became synonymous with the Lakers. A standout at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, Pa., outside Philadelphia, Bryant had auditioned for the Lakers in a predraft workout featuring a series of one-on-one drills against the former Lakers defensive ace Michael Cooper. Only a few high schoolers had gone straight to the N.B.A. at that point — and Bryant would be the first guard to do so. By the time he walked away from the N.B.A. in April 2016, he built an unmatched legacy that persuaded the Lakers to retire both jersey numbers he wore over two 10-season stretches: No. 8 and No. 24. Bryant is widely expected to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in late August 2020, the first time he is eligible. Bryant was flourishing in retirement, entering the world of storytelling and winning an Academy Award by transforming a poem to announce his retirement into an animated short film (“Dear Basketball”) that he wrote and narrated.