DENVER – Takeaways from the Rockets' 117-110 loss to the Denver Nuggets:
Eyes were empty, searching desperately for hope in one another or from cell phones that would say it was not true, that it just could not be true.
Gifted athletes moved slowly, as if even that was difficult, minds far away from the game to be played in less than an hour.
Word spread rapidly, as it typically does these days, as the Rockets and Nuggets were completing their usual pregame routines on Sunday. Some were walking to chapel, others back from a weight room. Few spoke. P.J. Tucker and Eric Gordon, always the last of the Rockets to shoot, took their shots, expressionless, silent.
By the time they returned to the visitors’ locker room in Pepsi Center, that desperate hope that the initial reports were wrong was gone. Players, coaches, fans, staff, media all struggled to find even a few words, going from shocked to shattered.
Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others had died in a helicopter crash. The pain of reality was no longer escapable, and yet, it was too soon before the day’s game was to begin to collect thoughts or share emotions.
The Rockets and Nuggets took the court and went through the familiar rituals. The lights went out before the national anthem with a few fans shouting “Mamba!” before the announcement could be made and a moment of silence could be observed.
The game went on. The Nuggets surged in the fourth quarter to send the Rockets to a loss that could not penetrate the pain already felt and was difficult to recall even shortly after it ended.
Sorrow would have to be faced once the game no longer offered a distraction.
The game was forgotten. A horrible day never will be.
1. Kobe Bryant was a legend. He was a global sports icon. To this generation of NBA players, however, he was that and more.
Life rarely allows us to meet our heroes. Movie stars and musicians, celebrities of every sort, leave us and there is sadness. But they were strangers, observed from afar.
For NBA players of this generation, the loss of Kobe Bryant at 41-years old, just a few seasons since he retired and as he was embracing and cherishing this life as he had his life as a champion, is different.
These players got to know their hero. He was the guy for them, as Michael Jordan was for those that came before them. And then he became one of them, more an inspiration than even a role model.
“Take Kobe away and I wouldn’t be here,” Spurs forward DeMar DeRozan, a Los Angeles native, told the media in San Antonio. “I wouldn’t have the love, the passion, the drive. Everything came from him.”
That’s what they loved, the qualities that spoke to them as athletes with not just the gifts, but the ambition to reach this level. That made him their star beyond the others of their youth. But Bryant became the hero that would treat them as peers, becoming so much more than the guy in the poster on their bedroom wall.
All around the league on Sunday, they tried to explain. That had to be as difficult as finding a way to play.
“Today is one of the toughest days of my life,” Rockets forward P.J. Tucker said. “Playing today was tough. This is beyond tough.”
It was tragedy upon tragedy. The NBA lost an icon. Players lost a hero. But Bryant had so completely embraced his life after basketball, had achieved so greatly in it and had so openly shared how he loved life as a dad, there was no escaping that Vanessa Bryant lost her husband, their surviving children lost their father, and that she and they and the families of the others in that helicopter will have to face pain that few others can know.
“With all their families, they need all the support they can get. I mean, all the support they can get,” Gordon said. “That’s just the toughest thing you can deal with.
“I knew his family. He loved his family. His girls were playing basketball. He was doing the stuff you’re supposed to do. I’m telling you; it hurts to the core.”
That pain will endure. The NBA was more than shaken on Sunday; it was gutted.
It was not just the shock, though that hit hard. It was the cruelty of so much loss. Bryant had become more to those that he bequeathed the game than he was even as a player. You could see it in the eyes, empty before they were filled with tears.
“We lost somebody that meant so much to all of us,” Rockets guard Austin Rivers said. “Then, when you hear about his daughter, as a father, I’ve said many prayers for that family and I’m going to continue to do so. It looked like he was the happiest he’s every been after basketball. His and Gigi’s relationship, everybody saw it.
“You don’t even have to be a basketball fan to feel this. One of the most competitive athletes, iconic athletes. More so, as a father, what he’s meant to that family. Prayers for Vanessa and the kids. May he rest in peace. This is tough.”
2. Basketball, at its best, is a game of passion. Few ever demonstrated that better than Bryant. But it was impossible on Sunday for players to feel those emotions, that drive that is so much a part of what they do.
How the Rockets and Nuggets, as with so many others around the NBA, played and in many cases played well, will remain difficult to understand. Rockets players who were asked how they played as they did, had no explanation. The Rockets and Nuggets played hard. For most of the day, they played well. The emotion, however, was missing.
After the game ended, Tucker said, he could barely remember how it happened. It was not just that it had become difficult to care about the numbers on the scoreboard. Too many thoughts were crashing into one another to save room for concerns with rebounding or transition defense.
That also made the performances remarkable. The game went on, with no time to even give much consideration to whether it should have. And perhaps the way the Nuggets and Rockets played offered escape, or at least momentary distraction, from grief.
That was the decision Pete Rozelle had made for the country when, days after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he chose to have the NFL schedule go on as planned. Pierre Salinger, Kennedy’s press secretary, had helped convince Rozelle that it was what Kennedy would have wanted. Rozelle believed it was something the country needed.
Maybe NBA players needed to play. It is impossible to know what Bryant would have wanted, though it seems that under similar circumstances, he would have found a way to excel, having had a bottomless well of emotions to call upon.
That those who had to play on Sunday could play well spoke to professionalism, but also to the dedication necessary to play at an NBA level. No matter what happens this season or in their careers, they might never have a tougher game to play. They did it right, even if they could enjoy none of it.
3. Before nothing else seemed to matter other than grief and getting through the day, the Rockets game in Denver was to be hugely important.
James Harden was out with a bruised thigh and doubtful to play on Monday. Russell Westbrook would be held out of Monday’s game, as he has been in one game of all back-to-backs this season. The Rockets, just two wins removed from their four-game losing streak, will on Monday play the Jazz, who had been the hottest team in the NBA with 19 wins in 21 games and a nine-game home winning streak.
They needed a win. No one would or could concern themselves with all that after a far greater sense of loss had gripped them. The issues remain.
The Rockets will have to find a way to recapture the sense of urgency impossible to create on Sunday. Perhaps by Wednesday in Portland they will be able to more fully focus, if only for the time it takes to prepare and play a game.
Grief comes in waves, often when least expected. The triggers can be unpredictable. In between, the season will go on. A tough road trip turned brutal on Sunday. For a team with goals that will remain with them when they arrive back home, the challenge has become greater.
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January 27, 2020 at 11:34AM
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