Kobe Bryant

Everyone else is doing this so I am too. I do have some things to say here.

Last Sunday evening my wife handed me her phone. Kobe Bryant. Helicopter. Dead. Wow! I mean...shock! Too young. Far, far too young. After that first reaction, my thought was honestly about his 13 year old daughter Gianna (also known as Gigi). I'd seen her and Kobe on some Twitter post or ESPN or somewhere sitting courtside at an NBA game and talking. My very first thought was that girl (I didn't know her name last Sunday) will never have another moment like that. She'll grow up without a father. At that point I didn't know she was also in the helicopter with her dad and was also one of the victims.

Over the past week, the entire NBA and beyond has paid tribute to Kobe Bryant and his legacy. Some of these tributes have been incredibly creative and inventive: 8 second and 24 second violations to start a game in honor of Kobe's two numbers he wore while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 seasons. Others like players switching their jersey numbers away from 8 and 24 to honor Kobe show how personal this loss is to some players. Still other ideas, like proposing the NBA logo be revised to Kobe's silhouette or the convoluted first one to three quarters plus 24 rule to win the All-Star Game are a little reactionary of just plain confusing; I can't imagine Kobe would want anyone to go to some of these lengths.

Last night the Washington Wizards staged their own tributes to Kobe before their game against the Charlotte Hornets. Warm-ups with 8 and 24 Bryant jerseys; a 24.8 second moment of silence; tributes from key personnel within the Wizards organization; and 8 and 24 second violations to start the game. The Hornets participated in that last one.

I was not a fan of Kobe Bryant while he was in the NBA for one reason and one reason only: he didn't play for the New York Knicks during the 1990s or for the Washington Wizards after that. Those were the only two teams I've rooted for in my time as an NBA fan and I don't root for other players on other teams. I'm not at the games to see other teams' players play ball. I don't care how great they are. I'll maybe make an exception for former Wizards that left on the right terms (I define what's right there) but other players? Nope.

A lot of people have posted this week their favorite Kobe memories. The 81 point game vs. Toronto, first Championship, scoring 60 vs. Utah in his final game, whatever. I had to search for mine. Over the past 20 years as a Wizards fan, I've seen Kobe Bryant play a bunch of times. I can only remember two: the 2002 game when Jerry Stackhouse dunked at the buzzer off the in bounds play to beat the Shaq and Kobe Lakers in a game the Wiz had no business winning and Kobe's final game in Washington in 2015 when the Verizon Center was making way more noise for Kobe and the Lakers than it was for the Wiz. I loved the first one; I hated the second. Neither of those are my favorite Kobe memory.

My favorite Kobe memory was watching the conversation he had with Gigi just a few weeks ago and which I referenced earlier in this post. Kobe is breaking down plays for his daughter while sitting courtside. The discussion is so detailed and animated and it's clearly being had between two very smart people. And she looks like she's holding her own, although she looks like she doubts him at one point only to remember he's one of the best players in the history of basketball. It's an awesome clip, even without sound, which I'm not sure anyone has. To me, Kobe was always the guy to root against, because he was either playing against the Wizards or I just always rooted against the Lakers. That clip got me beyond that, which is why my first thought when I heard the news about the helicopter crash was about Gianna as well as Kobe.

As I get older, I think I'm getting softer. But these kinds of events, where young people with promise are taken (and yes, I'm including Kobe in that group) are truly tragic. There were seven other people on that helicopter. Just like Kevin Blackistone said on ESPN's Around The Horn on Monday, I feel bad just commenting on two of the nine who died, but I don't know anything really about the other seven. I got nothing else here. Rest in peace. Never forget.

Cherrydale Sit-In

Today is the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. As I have done for each of the past six years that the Washington Wizards have hosted a matinee game on this holiday, today's post has something to do with the Civil Rights Movement. While there is plenty of action in the NBA today, this is not the day to post about basketball. Basketball today is a megaphone for something greater than a game.

Over the past six years, I have tried to write about places that had some significance to today's namesake, Dr. King. I've written about the Sanitation Workers' Strike in Memphis; the Lorraine Motel in that same city (where Dr. King was assassinated); the Lincoln Memorial (where he gave his famous I Have A Dream speech); West Park in Birmingham, Alabama (site of some particularly violent 1963 protests); and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. To reinforce my own understanding of these events, in the last six years, I have been to each of these spots where these events happened. There's nothing like being there to understand history.

Sandwiched between all that, I wrote a post about the timeline of the Civil Rights Movement. I figured marking the milestones of the some of the events making up the Movement might help me understand the bigger picture. It did.

This year I'm going way smaller and way more local. To Cherrydale.

About two years ago, I got married and moved to Cherrydale, a section of Arlington, Virginia defined by I-66 to the south; Cherrydale Baptist Church at the intersection of Lorcum Lane and Military Road at the north; Utah Street to the west; and a variety of roads at the east edge. Check out Google Maps for the internet-defined boundaries. 

I am fortunate to work in Clarendon, which means on days that are cool enough (which is generally about September through May), I can walk to work. When I can, my commute involves walking down the north side of Route 29 (yes, I'm refusing to use that other name) past the 7-11, the nail salon, the yoga place and the Safeway all the way down to Highland Street and then hanging a right to walk uphill to Clarendon. Apologies for using the generic names of the establishments along my walk. The names of these businesses don't register with me; I just know them by topic. I know there's a mattress place, a fishing tackle place and a tanning place on the opposite side of the street and I don't know those names either. I'm getting older, what can I say.

Sometime in the last couple of years, I noticed something had changed on my commute route. There had been a plaque set into the wall of the nail salon. Since pretty much nothing else on my morning and afternoon walk changes ever, I figured I'd stop and read it. Turns out in June of 1960, there was a sit-in at the counter of the Cherrydale Drug Fair to protest segregated lunch counters then in place throughout the south.

It is difficult today to think of Arlington as a segregated society. It's not like it's Alabama or Mississippi where people are still clinging to the idea of the old south in the 21st century. But I suppose at one time, it was just as bad if not worse than those places are today. I suppose that really it's not quite as accepting as I think it is today. I'm sure we still have lots of work to do here like we do most places.

On June 9, 1960, six college students from Howard and Duke Universities walked into the Cherrydale Drug Fair, sat down at the counter and because they were not all white, were refused service. They sat at the counter for almost 10 hours and endured threats and assaults throughout the day, including being pelted with cigarette butts and having to suffer through a visit by George Lincoln Rockwell (shown above) who was head of the American Nazi Party which was headquartered in Arlington at that time.

Compare the pictures above to those of similar events in Wichita, Kansas or Greensboro, North Carolina, and I'm sure the crowd standing, berating and leering at protestor Dion Diamond looks pretty tame. I mean there is genuine violence present in some of those photos in places elsewhere. But I'm pretty sure some of the white kids and adults shown above would have taken matters into their own hands quite willingly had the opportunity arisen.

I think it's important today to remember that places where we live today around D.C. were just as complicit in racial segregation as some of the states and towns that I've written about on this day in past years. I also think we need to remember to reject anything like this way of thinking. Today is not about basketball. Today we need to think about what this day means.

That's it for this year's post. Wiz - Pistons today at 2! Let's go Wizards!!