There’s no question that Kobe Bryant’s death was one of the most profound tragedies in sporting history. It shook the world, and it took the basketball community some time to grasp what had actually happened. Perhaps what was even sadder about that helicopter crash was the fact that Bryant was with his daughter Gianna, who also lost her life, along with seven others.
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Everyone on board that fateful chopper was heading to the Mamba Sports Academy for a basketball game, where Kobe was scheduled to coach his daughter. In the blink of an eye, everything changed—the worst happened. The day after the incident, one of Kobe’s closet friends, Tracy McGrady, shared something crazy the Hall of Famer used to tell him.
Call it grim foreshadowing, but Kobe once told McGrady that he wanted to “die young.” His ambition pushed him to go above and beyond anyone he ever idolized. But his ultimate goal wasn’t to grow old. It was to surpass them and etch his name in the history books forever.
“This sounds crazy, but Kobe spoke this. He used to say, ‘I want to die young. I want to be immortalized, I want to have my career be better than Michael Jordan, and I want to die young.’ I just thought he was so crazy for saying that. And when they told me the news, I just couldn’t believe it. Just like everybody else,” McGrady said, crying on Sportscenter.
It’s wild to think that Kobe once said he wanted to die young. When McGrady first heard the news, he was likely just as shocked as everyone else. But remembering what Kobe had told him must have made it all the more heartbreaking.
Initial fan reactions to what T-Mac said included some skepticism about whether he was telling the truth. But years later, NBA veteran John Salley has revealed that Kobe told him something similar. “I think with Kobe, he knew who he was going to be and who he was. He knew he didn’t have a long time on the planet. He said, ‘I do everything young, everything quick.’ So, he knew that he wasn’t going to be here for a long time,” Sally said on Vlad TV.
Even though he passed at 41, in retrospect, Kobe accomplished an incredible amount at a young age, and quickly. By 23, he already had three NBA titles. And by 30, he was, in all fairness, already considered one of the game’s greats. When he retired at 37, Kobe knew he had nothing left to give to the game and that it was time to focus on his family.
Salley’s recent comments are more or less the same as what he said five years ago, immediately following the tragedy, though he had initially expected Kobe to retire a bit sooner. “What I heard, and how he would say it to me, is he said, ‘I’d do everything young. I do it all young. I’m going to retire, I’m going to work here and retire by 32.’ He had in his mind what was going to happen and where he was going to move to. Like, it was all planned out already. I don’t think he was worried about it because he was big on living in the moment,” the four-time NBA champ said.
The former NBA veteran would go on to explain how, after his run-in with the law in a Colorado court case, that’s when Kobe decided to change his number from 8 to 24. Almost as if he was signifying to the world that he was a changed man. He knew after the incident that it was time to take things more seriously as a dad.
All in all, it’s still sad to think back on Kobe’s passing. He was still so young when it happened, and the people who died alongside him made the tragedy all the worse. But it is somewhat eerie to think that Kobe knew he would eventually die young, which is why he wanted to accomplish so much so early.
