Veteran Los Angeles sportswriter Mike Terry remembers the impact Kobe Bryant had on sports in the city and reflects on the palpability of losing him.

Mike Terry, a veteran Los Angeles sportswriter has covered teams in that city for three decades, but one of the most unique people he has ever seen was Kobe Bryant, who came to the L.A. Lakers as a teenage basketball phenom when others his age still dreamed of taking to a pro court. Now, a year since we lost the Black Mamba, he gives his reflection on what he meant to basketball and L.A. sports culture.

Not only have I been a sportswriter in Los Angeles, witnessing and covering high school, college, and professional athletics for both men and women, I am born and raised in the city — a lifelong Angeleno.

As a kid I was here when the Dodgers arrived and the Angels were born. I have seen the Rams come and go and come back. I saw the Raiders play here for 14 years. I was here when the Lakers arrived from Minneapolis; my dad took me to a couple of games in the early 1960s when their home was the Sports Arena. I can remember when Jack Kent Cooke bought the Lakers, created the NHL franchise Los Angeles Kings and built his own arena for them that became known as the Forum. (Both teams and the Forum were sold to Jerry Buss in 1979, and moved into their current home, Staples Center in downtown L.A., in 1999.)

As a reporter (and a fan), I have been blessed to view up close and connect with an amazing tapestry of athletic icons and Hall of Famers including Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Sandy Koufax, Reggie Jackson, Kirk Gibson, Rod Carew, Wayne Gretzky, Lisa Leslie, Marcus Allen, Bo Jackson … the list goes on and on.

I also got to see the phenomenon that was Kobe Bryant from his beginnings as a teenage wunderkind with the Lakers to his tragic death last January 26 in a helicopter crash that also took the lives of his second oldest daughter Gianna, 13, and seven others. It was a jolt to the order of the universe that seemed to create a portal for everything else bad that happened in 2020, and felt like one of the worst years ever worldwide for those of us who survived it.

The loss of Kobe Bryant at age 41 felt like an especially cruel blow for hoops aficionados whether they were Laker fans or not. He was a transcendent, generational talent; a lithe 6-6, 212-pound shooting guard and small forward who played 20 seasons and scored more than 33,000 career points. He was a 15-time All-Star, a regular season MVP, a two-time NBA Finals MVP, and a member of five NBA championship teams, the last one in 2010. He wore two different Laker uniform numbers, 8 and 24; both are retired.

For Lakers fans, it was like losing a family member — the older brother, the fun cousin, the uncle who listens to your music. We felt he cared not only about being part of us but being one of us.