It would begin as a low rumble, a murmur, and build to a simmer and then a low boil. It would start in one section of The Palace of Auburn Hills and ripple to the next and the next – like “The Wave” but for the ears, not the eyes. I’ve never survived a tornado but it felt like the description witnesses often provide – like a train approaching from the distance until it sounds like the tracks are running through your kitchen.
That’s how I’ll remember Kobe Bryant.
Nobody else ever quite shook the place the Pistons called home when they won all three of their NBA championships quite like Kobe. Championships and special moments made it erupt but those were events, not people, realized simultaneously by 20,000 sets of eyes.
The reaction was always anticipated. There was never any wonder what suddenly electrified the audience when they occurred, unlike the second or two of disorientation when the earth would shake and you weren’t sure why until – there he was – No. 24 in purple and gold. Ah, Kobe.
No player – certainly no visiting player – ever sparked that chain reaction of sound and electrical current, the first glimpse of Bryant emerging from the visiting tunnel seen by a few and then a few thousand and – within a matter of seconds ��� everyone sensing something was happening and ultimately realizing what it was.
LeBron James in the Miami Heat days came close. Michael Jordan in The Palace’s early years? Get real. Fans came to see the Bad Boys crush Jordan. The game, the rivalry, superseded any adulation Jordan inspired.
The Pistons beat Kobe’s Lakers in 2004, of course, for their third NBA championship, but Pistons fans never saw him as the villain that Jordan represented. Not close. Not ever. If there was a villain on that Lakers team, it was Shaq. And as that Finals series grew more distant, the reception for Kobe at The Palace became increasingly adulatory.
By the time he visited for the final time – Dec. 6, 2015 – it would be no exaggeration to say no visiting player ever had so thoroughly and completely become beloved by Pistons fans. Multiply that by 28 other opposing fan bases. <p. His hold on basketball fans was hard to quantify but undeniably powerful. And it extended, of course, to worlds beyond basketball and to every corner of the globe. He didn’t transcend merely basketball but every other discipline or demographic you could conjure. And that’s why news of his stunning, sudden, tragic death – along with eight other victims of Sunday’s helicopter crash, including his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, which goes beyond tragedy – so transfixed, horrified and saddened those awed and inspired by his 20-year NBA odyssey.
You can debate where Kobe ranks on the list of history’s greatest basketball players, but he’s in every discussion and it’s a very short list. It gets even shorter when you add as a qualifier the universal adulation Kobe inspired. It’s the ingredient that made for that indescribable electricity that would surge through The Palace at the first sighting of him for his annual visits.
For his last one – when the Pistons scored the game’s first 15 points and won going away on a night Kobe shot 2 of 15 and scored five points – it was all of that dipped in bittersweet coating. A week before that visit, Kobe confirmed what was widely suspected: His 20th season would be his last.
Do we ever really know why some merely entertain while others inspire as if enveloped by a force field of communicable energy? There are players with MVP trophies on their mantels still playing who might someday be considered Kobe’s peers but won’t ever shake Little Caesars Arena to its bolts at first glimpse of them.
If you were to poll today’s NBA players as to the star they idolized – the one whose identity they assumed as 8-year-olds on asphalt playgrounds or band-box gyms – the most common answer would be Kobe Bryant. Second place wouldn’t be in the same area code.
There surely will be a moment of silence tonight before the Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers tip off and that is absolutely as it should be. It will be a silence more deafening than an approaching train.