BEFORE Michael Jordan took to the stage to deliver a eulogy for his fellow Greatest Of All Time contender Kobe Bryant, emcee Jimmy Kimmel delivered a short recap of their first on-court meeting.
Kobe was just 18 at the time. Jordan and the Bulls would go on to win the game. But before he walked off the court, the young rookie sidled up to Mike and asked for tips on his shooting.
That would begin, as Jordan would narrate in his eulogy, a lifelong friendship built around their mutual love for the game.
“You know all of us have brothers, little brothers or little sisters, who, for whatever reason, always tend to get into your stuff, your closet, your shoes, everything. It was a nuisance, if I can say that word!” he said affectionately of Bryant.
But this “aggravation," as Jordan described it, would turn into love, and the retired Chicago guard would begin to consider himself as a big brother to the rising Los Angeles Laker, to whom he was often compared with.
“I wanted to be the best big brother that I could be,” Jordan said.
In front of a star studded audience that included fellow basketball icons Shaquille O’Neal, Magic Johnson, Elgin Baylor, Doc Rivers, Steve Nash, Jerry West, Tim Duncan, Dwyane Wade, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, and more, he recounted one of their late night texts exchanges.
At 2 a.m. in the morning, Bryant asked him about what he was thinking about when he was young and trying to work on his moves. “What age?” Jordan asked Bryant. Twelve, Bryant answered.
“At 12? I was trying to play baseball!”
It was one light moment of many, in a eulogy that was affectionate and humorous as it was heartbreaking. Perhaps Jordan’s most memorable line came when he glanced up, tears streaming down his face, and said, “I have to look at another crying meme for the next —” and the stadium exploded into laughter.
He added: “I told my wife I wouldn’t do this, because I didn’t want to see that for the next three or four years!”
Jordan, of course, was referencing his infamous crying meme.
But as he recounted, even as he dispensed advice to Bryant through the years, Kobe had his own effect on the NBA superstar.
“He knows how to get to you in a way that affects you personally, even if he’s being a pain in the ass,” Jordan said. “But you always have the sense of love for him, in the way he can bring out the best in you, and that’s what he did for me.”
He continued: “It’s very rare that you grow up against adversaries, and have conversations like that.”
To a fellow player who “gave every last ounce for himself to whatever he was doing," Jordan delivered these final lines:
“Kobe never left anything on the court, and I’d think that’s what he would want for us to do. No one knows how much time we have, that’s why we must live in the moment, we must enjoy the moment, we must reach and see and spend as much time as we can with our family and our friends and the people that we absolutely love.
"To live in the moment means to enjoy each and every one that we come in contact with. When Kobe Bryant died, a piece of me died. And when I look at the arena and across the globe, a piece of you died. Or else you wouldn’t be here. Those are the memories that we have to live with and we learn from.
"I promise you from this day forward, I will live with the memories that I had a little brother that I tried to help in every way I could. Please rest in peace, little brother.”
Source: Spin PH
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