By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA reporter
Privately, the Lakers honor Kobe Bryant every night they're together.
They say, "Mamba on three!" after each huddle. LeBron James wears a No. 24 finger sleeve. The Lakers often don Bryant's signature shoes.
But it's still very difficult to talk about him.
Said James: "I try not to put myself back in that head space because it’s just too dark for not only myself but for our organization and for everyone that’s involved in it."
Added Marc Gasol: "I’m not comfortable talking about it. I’m sorry. Still to this day, I have never really talked about it."
Putting on a Lakers uniform means representing an organization that Bryant poured his heart into for 20 years, playing on the court he dazzled on and sitting in the locker room in which he celebrated championships with champagne showers.
Everyone on the team had his own unique relationship with Bryant.
James grew up with posters of Bryant on his walls. When he was a junior in high school, he drove from New Jersey, where he was playing in a basketball tournament, to Philadelphia to meet Bryant during the 2001 NBA All-Star Game. Bryant gifted him a pair of his size-14 shoes. James, who was a size 15, religiously wore them anyway.
James, now 36, doesn't remember the first time he played against Bryant – but he vividly remembers the impression it left on him.
"Kobe, he’s not on the floor to talk to anybody – he’s out there to kill you," James said. "He’s out there to dethrone you, he’s out there to really stranglehold you, and you’d be able to take away from that. But it was just an awe moment. It was something that I would never, ever forget, to be able to grace the floor with someone who played the game with so much grace."
When Anthony Davis was a child, he used to try to emulate Bryant's turnaround jumper, awed by how much space the Lakers' superstar could create between himself and his defender with just a turn of his shoulders and hips.
Davis developed a friendship with Bryant when he was a 19-year-old on the USA men's national basketball team at the 2012 Olympic Games in London. Davis wasn't afraid to ask Bryant questions. Bryant respected that and took him under his wing.
Davis said the first moment that really stood out to him on the court against Bryant was when the Lakers played the New Orleans Pelicans in 2015. Bryant suffered a torn rotator cuff in his right shoulder in the third quarter, but he checked back into the game in the fourth.
"The very next play, they throw the ball to him in the post, and I think Dante Cunningham was guarding him, and he takes two dribbles and does a shimmy and shoots the ball left-handed," Davis said. "And it goes in. I just kind of stared at him downcourt and looked at the bench. I was just amazed that a guy who’s right-handed just comes in and says, ‘OK, I’m just going to shoot left-handed and play left-handed.’ That’s one of my earliest memories in the league of Kobe."
Everyone in the basketball world idolized Bryant's skills – and was crushed by his untimely death at age 41.
News of the helicopter crash broke when the Lakers were flying back to Los Angeles on Jan. 26, 2020, after playing Philadelphia the previous night. James had just passed Bryant for third on the all-time scoring list, and Bryant called to congratulate him hours before the flight.
The Lakers were shocked, devastated, broken.
James sobbed when he got off the plane. Days later, James and Davis got tattoos in Bryant's honor. Before the Lakers' next game, James made a speech in front of 19,000 fans at Staples Center, calling Bryant his brother and promising to carry on his legacy.
"As the leader of the ballclub, it was my job and my responsibility to take it all on and represent our team with the most strength that I could [muster] at that point and time," James said.
The Lakers grieved together.
In their first game after Bryant's death, they played in front of two empty courtside seats where Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, sat when they attended a Lakers game in December. During every road game the rest of the season, the Lakers endured heartbreaking tributes to Bryant. At home, his No. 8 and No. 24 jerseys hung in the rafters.
Through it all, they had each other.
"I leaned on 'Bron," Davis said. "'Bron leaned on me."
They devoted the rest of the season to Bryant.
And they often felt his presence.
There was the time they were playing the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the playoffs on the 24th day of the eighth month, and the score at one point in the first quarter was 24-8. Or the time Davis automatically yelled "Kobe!" after making a game-winning 3-pointer against the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Finals.
The Lakers took it as a sign.
"It showed us that it was destined for us to win a championship for him," Davis said.
Still, the Lakers grapple with processing Bryant's death.
Bryant is the guy who didn't flinch when Matt Barnes pretended to inbound the ball toward his head from a few feet away. He's the guy who shot two free throws after suffering a torn left Achilles tendon. He's the guy who scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors and 62 points through three quarters against the Dallas Mavericks. There were so many superhuman performances, so many moments of profound greatness, strength and resolve.
"It saddens our hearts to actually come to the realization that he’s gone," Davis said. "I know I still have trouble with it. You still just can’t believe it, especially when you’re really close to him."
But in many ways, Bryant will live on.
No one will ever forget him.
"There’s a lot of things that die in this world, but legends never die – and he’s exactly that," James said.
