Daring to dream about what Kobe Bryant could have achieved

I remember, first, the fog.

Sitting in the back of a cab headed down from my foothills home to LAX early on the morning of Jan. 26, 2020, I remember shivering at a fog so thick I couldn’t see out the car window.

I wondered, how will the cabbie drive through this? As the mist continued to surround the car all the way down the 110, I thought, this is no ordinary fog.

Seven hours and a cross-country trip later, I was sprawled on the bed in my Miami hotel room, exhausted from the dawn journey, embracing a nap such that I ignored my suddenly snarling smartphone. It buzzed, and it buzzed, and it buzzed, and finally, after a dozen missed calls, I finally sighed and picked it up.

It was Times assistant sports editor Athan Atsales. His usually calm voice was rising with each syllable.

“Bill, I have some really bad news to tell you,” he said, followed by two words that are still haunting today.

“Kobe died.”

I cried out in disbelief, threw down the phone, lay frozen for several minutes, then rolled off the bed, turned on my computer and began mourning the only way I knew how.

I began to write.

Kobe Bryant is gone.

I’m screaming right now, cursing into the sky, crying into my keyboard, and I don’t care who knows it.

Five years ago, that was the tortured lede of the column that was published in the immediate wake of Bryant’s death. That is all I’m reprinting here. I can’t bring myself to read the rest of the column. It still doesn’t seem real, and revisiting my overwrought words would make it real, and part of me still is not ready for that.

That is my story. You have yours. So many of you remember exactly where you were on that Sunday afternoon when you heard that Bryant, 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others were killed in a fog-shrouded Calabasas helicopter crash.

At a party. At a church. On your couch. Somewhere, everywhere, seemingly all of Los Angeles remembers where. For an endless afternoon, our eyes watered and our hearts pounded and our world stood still.

You heard. You gathered. You wept. You honored. With flowers and signs and jerseys and love sprinkled across street corners from Thousand Oaks to Newport Beach, you turned the region into the world’s largest funeral parlor, millions publicly mourning the loss of Los Angeles’ most popular athlete in the 41-year-old prime of his life.

It was impossible to digest then. Five years later, it is even harder to understand.

So how about, we don’t even try? Instead of reliving the awful events that have been endlessly recounted during the last half-decade, let’s make this a different sort of five-year anniversary column.

Instead of recounting Kobe Bryant’s death, let’s focus on what could have been the rest of his life.

What if Kobe Bryant had lived? What if he had blinked at the potential bad weather and never boarded that helicopter? What if Kobe Bryant were now a 46-year-old businessman and filmmaker and author and philanthropist living in Newport and wielding influence all over Los Angeles, what would that look like?

It’s obviously impossible to tell but, knowing his Mamba mentality and having closely covered him, I can safely guess he would have transformed what has become a dreadfully mundane local basketball scene into something spectacular again.

In losing our North Star, we not only lost a memorable past, but also a brilliant future.

Here’s what might have been.

Lakers star Kobe Bryant receives a standing ovation as he is introduced before a game against the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake Cityon March 28, 2016.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

The Lakers would have been perennial championship contenders.

Bryant would have evolved into an influential adviser to Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and, while he never would have supplanted his close friend, Rob Pelinka, he constantly would have been in Pelinka’s ear.

“Don’t break up the 2020 championship team! Don’t trade winning pieces for Russell Westbrook! Find more guys like Robert Horry and Rick Fox! Find people who don’t create a new culture, but add to the existing one!”

In other words, if Kobe Bryant were still here, Klutch Sports Group no longer would run the Lakers.

Ty Lue would be the Lakers coach.

JJ Redick is doing an admirable job, he’s vastly outperformed the predictions of critics like this one and he could be the Lakers’ coach for a long time.

But Bryant loved Lue, considered him one of the finest minds in the game and would have made it his personal mission to steal him from Steve Ballmer long before Redick was available.

And, oh yeah, Lue would have brought Brian Shaw with him, and Derek Fisher would have somehow found a seat on that same bench.

LeBron James finally would have been embraced by Lakers fans as one of their own.

Lakers star LeBron James points to the sky during the national anthem before a game against the Boston Celtics on Jan. 23.

(Wally Skali j/ Los Angeles Times)

Bryant would have made this happen.

In our last interview nine days before his death, Bryant asked me to help make it happen, saying, “When LeBron came to Los Angeles, he is now a Laker. He is part of our brotherhood, part of our fraternity, and we should embrace him that way.”

If Kobe were alive, James would have spent the final years of his career marching arm in arm with him into the sunset, Bryant commenting on each of James’ milestones, Bryant showing up to witness many of James’ heroics.

Instead of joining Kobe, however, James has been forced to essentially replace him, and you know that never will happen.

Without Bryant’s visible backing, James’ legacy is stronger in Cleveland and his impact was greater in Miami. He’ll never be considered a real Laker, simply because he isn’t Kobe.

That in-season tournament banner? Are you kidding me?

Yes, the NBA still would have strong-armed the Lakers into raising that silly banner last year after they won the league’s inaugural in-season tournament.

But a day later Bryant would have convinced the Lakers to cover it up.

“What’s there to be happy about? Job’s not finished,” he famously said after being asked by local broadcaster Ted Sobel about his dour look after the Lakers had taken a two-games-to-none lead over Orlando in the 2009 Finals.

Bryant didn’t like anything phony, anything contrived, anything that interfered with the serious business of winning a championship. About that whatever-it-is tournament thingy, he would have said, not in his rafters.

There never would be three Kobe Bryant statues in front of Crypto.com Arena.

One of the statues honoring Kobe Bryant outside Crypto.com Arena.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

A statue of him during the 81-point game? Yes. His wife, Vanessa, said he actually designed that one. Another statue of him with Gigi? Absolutely. he was the ultimate Girl Dad.

But there are currently plans for a third Kobe Bryant statue, three times as many as anyone else, with his main statue taller than anyone else’s, and he never would have stood for that.

He was always cocky but never a self-promoter. He loved to win but he never would rub someone’s face in it. And he loved the Lakers legends so much that he would be embarrassed to be given more attention.

He would have said something like, “You want to erect a third statue of me? Give that space to Pau Gasol.”

Bryant would become the owner of what would become the WNBA’s best franchise, the Los Angeles Sparks.

Bryant’s affinity for women’s basketball was well documented. He attended numerous college and pro games with Gianna. He once said he thought three women’s players — Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore and Elena Delle Donne — could play in the NBA.

He tutored Sabrina Ionescu to greatness, his impact such that she even spoke at his celebration of life service. He characterized the great Jewell Loyd as his “little sister.”

There’s no way he would have tolerated living in the same city of the train wreck that is the Sparks. Once the league’s best franchise, the Sparks have devolved into a rudderless mess with constant changes in leadership, no real stars and only recently announced plans for a new practice facility after being relegated to temporary locker rooms at a community college.

Here’s guessing he would have eventually just bought the team from a Dodger-led group and turned them back into titlists.

And in the 2028 draft, when it came time for his team’s first pick, there would have been no question.

“The Sparks select, from the University of Connecticut, Gianna Bryant.”

God, I miss him.