Im jesse l. Martin. Thank you for watching. Good night. You know, its about appreciating every moment for me, you know, cause weve been through so much, and as your career kind of. Im not an old man, but you know, you start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is much brighter than the one at the beginning of the tunnel. So its really about appreciating every day as it comes, you know, every game, every win, every loss, every practice. Its just soaking every day in. Hello and welcome. Im jesse l. Martin. Kobe bryant was just 18 years old when he took the nba by storm. Over his 20 years in the league, he was an 18time all star, fivetime champion, and twotime olympic gold medalist. His achievements off the court were just as lauded. He was an accomplished writer, Academy Award winner, and a selfdescribed girl dad of four beautiful daughters. At 41, bryant had reached the pinnacle of his success, until one foggy january morning. This is how it really happened. [ Crowd Chanting kobe ] smith kobe wanted to be the best. He wanted to be the best who ever lived. Costas dynamic, determined, focused, obsessive, goaloriented, willful very willful. Just able to will his way through the combination of talent and athletic character. Sielski i think kobe bryant is the consummate example of an athlete, or someone in any profession, who knew what he or she wanted to do at the earliest possible age, was committed to staying on that path and doing whatever was necessary to achieve that goal, and then achieved that goal. Bryant i feel like god has blessed me with a talent to play this game. And id be doing a major injustice if i didnt try to maximize my potential. Kobe had many chapters of his playing career, and now, he was entering yet another chapter of his postcareer life. Kobe bryant cared so much about everything he did, and he is completely adored in los angeles because of that. Bryant it doesnt get any better than this. Thats the beauty about growing up in one city your whole career is that you grow up in the city, you know . The good, the bad, everything you know, you go through it all. You know . And right now, were cruising. Folks were out her Mountain Biking this morning and saw an aircraft in distress that went down into the hillside. [ Siren Wailing ] schiavo the first call came in, that there was a Helicopter Crash in calabasas, and it was a fairly goodsized helicopter, and there were a number of people on board. I just remember sitting at my computer, just, you know, looking at the tweets and monitoring the news. And we saw one pop up it said, kobe bryant was in a helicopter that crashed. When i saw the alert, i didnt believe it. I was just like, this this has to be wrong. Most people werent even saying what it was. They were just saying, is it true . Smith i was sitting on my couch at home with my dad, who was visiting from colorado. And on comes the news. And im like, oh, that cant be true. That cant be true. It was just this hole in my heart, you know . Just, why . You know, what happened . Kobe 100 of his Thought Process was of his daughters and family. cause every time i would talk to him, he would mention his daughters and vanessa. And you could just tell that he had a really deep love for them. Natalia and gigi are the ones that, kind of, you saw throughout a lot of his playing career. They were the one dressed in little laker uniforms. Markazi kobe and gigi just had this bond. Kobe wouldve been proud of gigi no matter what she did, but he was so immensely proud of the way that she played the game. He loved bragging about gigi, her Thought Process. He loved talking about the questions that she would ask. He would talk about the shots that she would take, the freethrows that she would make. Gigi was the one that was so much like kobe. Smith kobe started the Sports Academy for gianna. It was all for gianna, because he saw that there was nothing out there for girls. James Christina Mauser was a teacher and a Womens Basketball coach. She was 38 years old, and she was actually a very talented Basketball Player herself. And kobe handselected her to be the Assistant Coach for the Mamba Academy basketball team. Mauser christina was a talent, but more than her talent as a Basketball Player was her ability to connect with these girls. I mean, they adored her. We were both teachers at a Private School in Orange County, in newport beach. And i was working with kobe. And we said, i really want to get this girls club team started, and so he got some talent from around the area, and he kind of recruited certain girls to play on the team. Kobe said, i need a good coach, and he said, you think christina would be interested . And so i asked her and she said, no, i dont want to do it. [ laughs ] and i kind of persuaded her to give it a shot. Elam one of the things you need to understand is that kobe bryant lived in Orange County and his Basketball Academy was in thousand oaks. So he lives south of los angeles, and his Basketball Academy is north of los angeles. It would take a very long time to drive there, but its only about a 30minute Helicopter Ride to get there. Riddell and kobe bryant evidently decided that he just didnt want to have to put up with the traffic, so he started traveling a lot by helicopter. Obrien the combination of celebrity and aviation, mystery and fear, is very compelling to people. And you know, whats interesting is you can connect a dot directly between what happened to john f. Kennedy jr and what happened to kobe bryant. Riddell you can be born with talent, and you can be born with the genetics, but to be the best, it requires so much more than that. Do you think you were born to do this . No question, no question. [ laughs ] i mean, this is this is in my blood. I mean, my father played, my uncle played, my grandparents played, my grandma played. This is like, you know this is what we do. Mauser i know that he just adored his girls. He was dedicated to his family. He picked them up from carpool. He would drop them off and he would, you know he would bring them flowers to school on valentines day. And he would kiss them, hed hug them. He was a very affectionate, loving father. It was impossible to see kobe in public in later years in his life and not think of gigi. He clearly loved all his daughters, but you could see something there, that there was this shared love of basketball and a shared desire, on their parts, for her to be great at that. Riddell kobe was frequently at wnba games, often with his daughter gianna, preparing her for the future, and we started learning about how he was working with her, showing her his incredible moves. And who knows what gianna would have become. And thats one of the biggest tragedies of this story, is that, i mean, she could have been amazing. And i think people expected that she was going to play in the wnba and be amazing. Smith i dont think kobe ever did anything without a purpose. And i think thats what this purpose was, was to create an environment for young girls to succeed. Watt we have spoken to two parents who were waiting at kobes mamba Sports Academy. There was a tournament going on there this morning. Kobes team, his daughters team, gigi they were supposed to be playing there at noon. [ Helicopter Blades Whirring ] kobe and the others were headed north of los angeles to an area near the Camarillo Airport for a basketball tournament. Obrien the sikorsky s76b is the absolute pinnacle of Executive Transportation in the sky. Its the limousine of the sky. Its as good as it gets in this category of helicopters. James ara zobayan was a very experienced pilot. He had flown for 13 years. And in addition to flying kobe, he had also flown a lot of other very highprofile clients. Herrmann this pilot was kobe bryants and his family preferred pilot and also preferred helicopter company. He exclusively would request this specific pilot. Obrien by all accounts, ara zobayan was an exemplary pilot. Experienced, safe, practically spotless record, in excess of 8,500 hours, puts him in an elite category of Helicopter Pilots. Kobe bryant was willing to let his children fly alone with this pilot. So thats a pretty high bar for anybody. James there were nine people on board that day. Ara zobayan, kobe bryant, his daughter gigi. You also have two of gigis teammates, Payton Chester and alyssa altobelli, as well as their parents Sarah Chester and john and Keri Altobelli and Christina Mauser. Mauser and my oldest daughter penny played on the Lower Division of the mamba team. But the week prior, penny had had a 104 fever. Because she wasnt feeling good, we kept her off the helicopter. I had a show the night before. I got home around midnight, and we said goodnight. Christina was up waiting for me. And then she said, i have to be out the door by 7 00. I said, okay. So she says, so if i dont see you all, ill be back by noon. I remember her kissing me, saying, i love you. And i was so tired, i didnt wake up. She walked out the door, and i heard the door shut, and i was gonna get up and say, hey, goodbye, and i just didnt. Norman, bad news. I never graduated from med school. What . But the good news is. Xfinity mobile just got even better now, you can automatically connect to wifi speeds up to a gig on the go. Plus, buy one unlimited line and get one free for a year. I gotta get this deal. I know. Faster wifi and savings . I dont want to miss that. Thats amazing doc. Mobile savings are calling. Visit xfinitymobile. Com to learn more. Doc . At 15, 16, 17, all of the talk, the money, the attention that didnt matter to me at all. And it still doesnt, because, you know, what i love to do is play basketball, so as long as that love is there and my focus is there, ill be fine. Riddell the summer of 1978 was a big deal for pop culture and sports. So, if you were around at the time, youll remember the movie grease that was dominating at the box office that summer. Larry bird was drafted to the celtics. And on august the 23rd, 1978, something happened that most people wouldve completely missed, but actually, its a date that is highly relevant because arguably, it helped change the course of the nba. That was the day that kobe bryant was born. Sielski Joe And Pam Bryant got married in college. They had two daughters before Kobe Bean Bryant was born. Lazenby and kobe, the great steak from japan, was a favorite of the bryants. They loved the name, and that played a role in their naming their son kobe. Sielski joe bryant grew up in southwest philadelphia. He was an absolute Basketball Star On The Playgrounds of the city. Now, kobe got all that style, that love of style, that love of being a showman, from joe, but the killer side of kobe that came from his mother. Pam cox bryant was the killer in the equation. The hardnosed, really fiercely competitive personality. When kobe bryant talks about the Mamba Mentality, his mother pam is where the Mamba Mentality came from. Egan joe had been a firstround pick for the 76ers, and his nba career wasnt going probably as well as he wanted. The Italian League was an upandcoming league, and i think they saw it as a great opportunity, maybe, to get himself on track. Joe could make a good living and be able to play in the way he wanted to play. So he and the family moved to italy, and he spent the better part of eight years there. Lazenby kobe you know, he was the ball boy. He was the mop boy on the floor. Taking it all in, in wideeyed wonder. Kobe and his sisters learned the language quickly, but it was a tough adjustment for American Children to go into that european setting. The fact that kobe bryant grew up in italy, he had very much an international perspective. He was very worldly in his interests, in terms of food and culture. And i think that broadened his perspective once he came back to the us in the late autumn of 1991. They wanted, always, ultimately, to get back to philadelphia. Joe and pams roots were all in philadelphia. And thats how they settled in on lower merion, cause they wanted a good academic place for their kids to go. Joe bryant wanted his son to succeed very, very badly. I definitely think he had a dream about kobe as much as kobe had the dream. Sielski kobe is in eighth grade when the family returns. And already, theres scuttlebutt around him. Who is this kid who just kind of came out of nowhere . Egan the first time i saw kobe play, i was playing in a rec league one saturday afternoon. It was all men playing, and i saw this one guy. He looked like he was about, maybe a junior in high school. Skinny, about 6 feet tall, but good and played hard. And so, after the game was over, i asked him where he went to school. And he said, bala. And the only place i could think of was a middle school. And i said, How Old Are You . And he said, im 13. And i thought, oh, my god. Oh, my god. I said, whats your name . And he said, im kobe bryant. Early on, kobe liked to shoot the ball. He liked to shoot the ball a lot. While he was a freshman, his teammates actually resented him for it. But as he gets better as a player, he becomes more unselfish and the team starts to improve. Even if he had been a terrible player, he wouldve been one of my alltime favorites to coach. Just because he loved the game so much, he worked so hard at it, he was so passionate about it. You could tell just by speaking with him that he had an extra gear of intelligence that not only most Basketball Players, but most High School Kids dont have. Sielski kobe was a very strong academic student, very curious. In particular, he liked his english classes. Just about everything that kobe wrote about in high school had a Little Something to do with basketball. Treatman i could see it in 11th grade, for absolute sure, that this wasnt just gonna be a great player, this wasnt just gonna be a Great College player, this was a 10time nba all star. Sielski by the time hes a senior, kobe really is a celebrity. Everybody in the philadelphia area, and even around the country to a great degree, know him as the best highschool player in the country. After one game in the state tournament, every Single Player on the opposing team that had just lost to lower marion lined up at center court to get kobes autograph. Lazenby kobe told me his great gift in life was that he knew what he wanted to do from a very young age. He obviously wanted to be a pro Basketball Player just like his father. He wanted to get to the nba, and he wanted to get there as quickly as he possibly could. Egan we didnt really think that he would do it right away. But of course, he had his own plan. So, they held a Press Conference at the high school. Sielski he is so confident in that moment. Uh, kobe bryant. Sielski you watch him stand up there, theres no hesitation, theres no ums, no ahs. Hes playing to the cameras. And he pauses at one moment. And he says. Ive decided to take my talents to, uh. Sielski then he puts his hand to his chin and he pretends like hes hesitating, and hes really not. And the crowd starts to laugh and cheer a little bit. And this big smile comes over his face. No, i have decided to skip college and take my talent to the nba. Sielski and you see, in so many ways, the confidence, even the arrogance, the sort of star power, the star presence that he has, everything thats ahead for him, over the next 25 years. Welcome back to how it really happened. Kobe once told a friend that he didnt fear death. He had been reading about the samurai and quoted, a beautiful death is inspirational. If you can inspire people through your life, you never die. Six months later, kobe bryant would be gone. Kobe bryant was heading to a basketball tournament. He was bringing his 13yearold daughter, gianna. She was on the way to play. There were a number of parents, a number of children, heading to this basketball tournament. Obrien that morning, the pilot, ara zobayan, two hours before the flight, did his routine weather check, and the weather was not great, but not nogo either. Moist air and fog had drifted in from the pacific ocean. Schiavo in los angeles, those clouds, on a cloudy day, can hang right at the top of the mountains. Markazi i was actually in calabasas. I remember distinctly talking to my dad saying, like, are you okay to drive . Because we really cannot see the street in front of us. Id never seen fog like that. Schiavo island express helicopters, on the two prior days, had canceled 13 flights because of Weather Conditions. And the Weather Conditions on this day, depending upon who you ask, were maybe a little better or were not better at all. Sielski team kobe knew that if he was going to maximize his star power to be as famous and as great as he wanted to be, he had to do it in a big city. Kobe was gonna get to the lakers by hook or by crook. And so he made it clear that he wasnt gonna play for certain teams if they drafted him. Jerry west hatches a plan. He has a trade in place to make sure that the lakers acquire kobe bryant. Treatman kobe had a chip on his shoulder because there were people who doubted him. He wanted to prove that he was