Hey, what's up? Welcome to a bonus episode of English with Dane. This will be a quick one. I didn't really know if I should put one out about this, but I decided to because I wanted to share a few thoughts with you guys regarding the events that took place on Sunday. I guess it's more for me than it is for you. As I'm sure you've all heard by now, Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and five other people died in a helicopter accident just outside Los Angeles.
As some of you know, I'm a huge, huge basketball fan, and I've been playing basketball as far as I can remember, and I still play to this day. It's a sport that has given me many things. It has shown me the value of competition, the importance of practice and determination. And I think as cliche as it sounds, it has taught me that teamwork is the key to success, something which I have applied to every aspect of my life.
Basketball has taught me that sometimes you can try your hardest, fight tooth and nail, and you know, it just wasn't your day. And that's okay. But I think out of all the things that basketball has given me, the most important of all has been friendship. It sounds cliche again, but I have incredible friends and teammates, and I form deep, lasting connections because of it. Why am I saying all of this?
I guess I'm just sad about Kobe and I'm reflecting out loud in Bosalta, but I think the reason I'm talking about my friends, basketball, and stuff is because, well, I was reading about something the other day, another famous accident that shook the entire world. And it feels similar to the tragedy that happened on Sunday with Kobe, his daughter, and the rest of the passengers.
So on February 3rd, 1959, a plane carrying rock star Buddy Hawley and up and comers Richie Valence and JP Richardson crashed in Iowa. They tragically lost their lives, and this event came to be known as The Day the Music Died. The world mourned a terrible loss, and people all over felt an immense sense of sadness and unfairness. My brother, the rest of my friends, teammates, and I all grew up watching Kobe Bryant. We watched him compete harder than anyone. We watched him win more than anyone.
We watched him dominate, we watched him suffer devastating injuries, we watched him cry out of frustration, we watched him sacrifice, come back, and still do the impossible. He came into the NBA in 1997, I think, when I was like eight or nine years old, and quickly became everyone's hero. You had to love him. Even if he was destroying your team, because he did it in the coolest way. He was like Superman because he would do things that nobody else could.
And when he performed, you knew you were watching history. I'm too young to have seen Michael Jordan in his prime, right? In his peak years. So Kobe was my reference growing up. I got to see him as a kid, as an adult, and I don't remember the NBA without him. I realized that in my head, I've always connected him to basketball and the NBA in general, to the point where they became synonymous. On Sunday, I was leaving a basketball game from the Spanish League with my brother.
It was Estudiantes versus Unicaja. We had gotten tickets, so we walked over and attended. After the game, we walked out and started heading home, talking about the game and checking stuff on our phones. Then my brother suddenly stopped walking, looked up from his phone, and told me that Kobe Bryant had died in a plane crash. We couldn't believe it. We didn't want to believe it. We started investigating and talking to our friends from the team and our WhatsApp group.
None of us wanted to believe the news. We started investigating to see if another source confirmed what had happened, desperate to find out if it was all an elaborate and tasteless joke, but it wasn't, it was true. Before I mentioned the airplane accident that killed Buddy Hawley and company, and how it came to be known, se llegó a Gonocer, as the day the music died. Well, it kind of felt like Sunday was the day basketball died.
And I'm not trying to be dramatic, but in a way I do feel like that. That guy was always there doing the impossible. He had become synonymous with the sport and he was suddenly gone. And it felt like a piece of all of us kind of, you know, went with him. He was and is famous not only because he was the best, the most competitive, the most feared, and respected player of his generation, but for his mentality in general, the Mamba mentality. The belief that nothing can get in your way, right?
No obstacles, no situation is hard enough that you can't overcome. He influenced millions of people when he stepped onto the court. He made you believe in the impossible. He made you believe that nobody could stop you from achieving whatever you wanted to achieve. And I think that's what I'll take with me. Kobe retired in 2016, and it was a beautiful and sad moment for basketball fans around the world. But in his last game, he scored 60 points. That's the most Kobe thing ever.
I think I could talk about his records and performances, but I don't have enough time to go through all of them. I'll always remember what he was to me, an inspiration and a role model. And it's an incredibly sad day for a lot of people, myself included. But you know, everything keeps going, and this is the time to apply everything we've learned from Kobe.