The heartwarming video was shot seven years ago but has been making the rounds again lately. It’s of the late Kobe Bryant at home and gleefully watching his hometown Philadelphia Eagles win their first Lombardi Trophy.
It was shot in 2018 by Bryant’s wife, Vanessa, and originally posted on her Instagram account. The legendary Lakers star, cradling toddler daughter Bianka, paces in a darkened room at home while watching the Eagles put the finishing touches on a Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots.
“Oh my god, yes, bro,” Bryant erupts as Tom Brady’s last-gasp Hail Mary falls incomplete. “We won the … Super Bowl. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. We won the … Super Bowl.”
The 1:25 clip, in which Bryant dances around in celebration, is especially poignant now. Not only are the Eagles one victory from another Super Bowl trip — they play host to the Washington Commanders in the NFC championship game — but Sunday also marks the fifth anniversary of the horrific helicopter crash that look the lives of Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others.
The Super Bowl video harkens to a happy time, when Bryant wasn’t pulling off an amazing athletic feat of his own but was a relatable everyday football fan.
Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Mike Sielski, author of the 2022 book “The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality,” said that brief video captures the essence of Bryant, who made the jump directly from Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia suburbs to the NBA.
“People here knew him when he was Kobe Bryant, high school basketball star, excellent student, kid who we got along with in the hallways,” Sielski said. “They didn’t know him as Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers superstar.”
Bryant had a complicated relationship with the City of Brotherly Love. His father, Joe, played for the Philadelphia 76ers, and at one point Kobe dreamed of following in his footsteps. In 1996, the 76ers used the No. 1 pick on Georgetown guard Allen Iverson and Bryant was selected 13th by the Charlotte Hornets, who promptly traded him to the Lakers.
When the Lakers played Philadelphia in the 2001 NBA Finals, Bryant famously said he wanted to “cut [the 76ers’] hearts out.” Naturally, that riled basketball fans in his old city.
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“If the Sixers had drafted him and he had played for them instead of the Lakers, I don’t have any doubt he would have been the most beloved athlete in Philadelphia sports history,” Sielski said.
“Because he would have been the perfect combination of the talent and the commitment to winning and excellence. The idea of the Mamba mentality being born in Philadelphia and being part of that would have made him an absolute god here. I don’t have any doubt about that.”
Mike Egan understood that passion and loved Bryant for it. Egan was a top assistant at Lower Merion under head coach Gregg Downer during Bryant’s junior and senior years, and first met the hoops prodigy on the courts of the local Jewish community center.
“I first noticed this kid who was really fascinated by the fact that he could jump up and touch the rim,” said Egan, who was an assistant coach at Wilmington College in Delaware. “You sit around and you’re waiting for the game on the main court to end, and he must have jumped up and touched the rim a hundred times. Over and over again.
“The game started, and he was good. He was a skinny, maybe 6-foot kid, but he made good plays and I think he made the winning shot at the end.”
Egan was always on the lookout for talent, and he thought if the kid progressed and got a little bigger, he might be a fit for Wilmington. He asked young Bryant where he played high school ball.
“He said in a whisper of a voice, ‘I go to Bala,’” Egan said. “I’m thinking, `Where the hell is Bala High School?’ And I said, `Wait a second, how old are you?’ He told me he was 13.”
The coach quickly put it together. Bryant was a student at Bala Cynwyd Junior High and the son of Joe Bryant. Clearly, his trajectory had him on a loftier path than Wilmington. As the years passed, and Egan took a job at Lower Merion, the two became good friends.
“I just feel so fortunate to have gotten to spend as much time with him as I did,” Egan said. “I always say about Kobe that he would have been one of my favorite players I ever coached even if he was a terrible player, because he just loved it.
“To be a coach, you have to be a little crazy. To give up all that time and effort with kids coaching a game. But he was as crazy as us. Just to see him and his work ethic and dedication and passion, just wanting to keep getting better all the time.”
Jeremy Treatman was a family friend of the Bryants, who dabbled in coaching but also organized and promoted basketball tournaments. In fact, he was running a girls tournament five years ago when he received word of the helicopter crash.
As with so many people, Treatman was in shock at the news. He thought about ending the event on the spot, but decided to continue, putting 33 seconds on the clock — matching Bryant’s high school jersey number — and asking for a moment of silence from the crowd.
“I remember I just grabbed a man I didn’t know and started sobbing on his shoulder,” Treatman said. “That was crazy. Just a complete stranger. At whatever point it hit me, I did that.”
He attended the celebration of life of Kobe and Gianna at Staples Center nearly a month later and was amazed at the outpouring of love from the sports world and beyond.
“I was so happy that Kobe had this impact and was so beloved,” Treatman said. “There were people who didn’t like him during his career. He had a star-crossed career. Battles with his teammates, battles with the press, battles with the law. For him to be beloved the way he was awesome.
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“When he died, he was treated like the tragedy of JFK dying, of Princess Diana dying. It had that much of an impact. That blew me away. And what did it take to get Kobe Bryant off of the airwaves and the news cycle? It took COVID. You needed a story of that magnitude to get people to stop thinking about Kobe Bryant every day.”
With the Eagles a win away from another Super Bowl appearance, and the anniversary of the tragedy, Bryant is back on the minds and hearts of people in his hometown.
“The magic of that video is that you so rarely saw him in absolute, unfettered pure joy,” Sielski said. “It was always the next thing. Even when he won a championship it was almost like a relief as opposed to, `Oh, I’m a champion. This is the greatest thing in my life.’
“But in the video he’s so freaking happy, dancing around his house. I’m sure for people who knew him and loved him, there’s a part of them that’s thinking, boy, he’d be loving this too.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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