Mourning Kobe Bryant, One Year Later

Gotham Chopra reflects on the lessons he learned from Kobe Bryant, and how the Black Mamba helped him get through all the pain of 2020.

I’ve spent a good amount of time this week reading many of the tributes online to my late friend Kobe Bryant and his sweet daughter Gigi. Here’s mine.

I got to know Kobe in 2015 working on a documentary called Muse, and we spent a lot of time together in an edit room we built for the project in Newport Beach. Kobe lived in Newport, and as we got deeper into the story-building, he demanded that we build the edit space close to him so he could stay involved. We affectionately called our small space “Kobe jail,” which of course Kobe loved. He’d occasionally shower the team with some signature shoes to make sure the prisoners stayed content….and for the most part it worked! During many long days and nights in the edit room, we talked about storytelling and his career. Kobe was intensely curious, especially about the details and the component parts that went into filmmaking – from editing, to shot selection, and composing original score, even things like color grading and sound mixing. It was both excruciating and exhilarating. Intoxifying and at times 100 percent intolerable! Occasionally, we’d get away from the doc and one of my favorite things to do with him was to watch NBA games. I remember once sitting with him watching one contest in which a player (who shall not be named!) went 0-9 in the first half. In the second half, he didn’t take a single shot, finishing the day 0-9.

Kobe shook his head in disbelief. “Bro,” he said. “I’d go 0-49 before I stopped shooting the ball.” I laughed, and he continued. “The only way you really lose in this game is when you quit and beat yourself.”

A year ago, when I heard about the accident that claimed Kobe and Gigi’s life, it was the first in a series of events that resulted in the most horrible year. There were many days throughout 2020 when I just didn’t feel like getting out of bed and taking on the day—but then I’d think about Kobe and what he said to me watching that game. Kobe didn’t think about yesterday or the last game or the last shot. It was always about the next one for him. Even if he had been missing  shot after shot, he was going to take the next one and he was going to make it. If he didn’t? He would try again. He wasn’t going to quit and beat himself. Never. He was going to keep shooting until he hit that shot and then it was all going to turn around for him. He’d get hot, go on a run, and hit every shot until he won the game.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this year and especially this week as I mourn his and Gigi’s loss once again. These days of Zoom school and Zoom meetings, social distancing and variant strains, partisanship and bickering squeeze us from all sides. It all occasionally makes me feel like throwing my hands up and giving up, but then I think about Kobe shaking his head, poised to take another shot. And I say to myself: Today is going to be the day it all turns around. And if not today, then tomorrow.

Ain’t no quit in him. Ain’t no quit in me.