Column: Working back from the darkest days

As overcast days go, this past Sunday pushed its way into the top two.

That Tuesday in 2001 will likely always be tops, or I should say the absolute bottom. That Thursday in 1991 when Magic Johnson announced he had HIV was terrible; one of those moments when the wind gets pushed out of you.

Maybe you know the feeling – you’ve been dogpiled during a pickup football game and now you’re gasping for air and pretty sure, for a couple panicked seconds, that the air isn’t coming.

But you’re not lying prone on the Wheatland County Courthouse lawn, you’re standing in front of the TV in the Billings Gazette newsroom. The day gets quite a bit cloudier, darker.

So it was on Sunday. First you hear about Kobe Bryant dying, which is bad enough – even if you’re not a Lakers fan, and I am not – but then you hear who else was on that helicopter and your ribcage is getting squished again.

Bryant was the perfect 50-50 player. You either loved him or had some degree of grudging respect. He evoked plenty of fan emotion and he loved it.

In the hours after the crash someone on ESPN brought up Bryant’s final game in the NBA, when he hung 60 on the Utah Jazz.

If you were a detractor, you had your ammo: The man took 50 shots in that game. FIFTY.

If you loved him, you had the comeback in that he poured in 23 fourth-quarter points as the Lakers came from behind. TWENTY-THREE.

If you were a detractor, you had the awful business in Aspen, Colorado – a resort worker accused Bryant of rape – and the tumultuous Lakers of Shaq and Kobe from 1996-2004.

If you were a fan, you’re not giving those titles back. Your guy was the measuring stick against all his peers measured themselves. He was bullying teammates as much as opponents and the ends justified the means.

This was before the second phase of his career when he got a couple more rings, started building relationships in the media and appeared to have friends.

Had much changed? I’m not sure. It seems like he was personable enough. He always seemed to outwork everyone.

Jimmy Fallon spoke about the two of them meeting at a party – Fallon was 21 and Bryant was 17 – and making a beer run (Kobe, the non-drinker, drove). They’d been friends ever since.

If this tragedy had happened before I would have felt awful but his post-NBA career was shaping up, well, nicely.

He’d won an Oscar. He was a “girl dad,” telling Jimmy Kimmel how fans would say he needed to have a boy to continue his legacy only to have Gianna, who was standing right there, say, “No, I’ve got this.”

Sports writer Steve Rushin – famously married to all-time UConn great Rebecca Lobo – took in a Huskies game with Kobe and Gianna Bryant. It seemed inevitable that Gianna would be a UConn player.

Should have been.There’s not much else to say, except grouse that these dark days are happening too often. It will take some work to get over this, but you know what? We have the perfect example to follow.

Fritz Neighbor can be reached at 406-756-4463 or at fneighbor@dailyinterlake.com. You can also find him on Twitter @Fritz_Neighbor.