To know their back story is to understand why even now, a full day after receiving the awful news and for the foreseeable future, Brian Shaw grapples with the loss of Kobe Bryant.
“I might have known him longer than anybody else still involved in the NBA,” Shaw told NBC Sports Bay Area on Monday, 27 hours after Kobe, his daughter, Gianna, and seven others perished in a helicopter crash in Southern California.
“He was a special, special player,” Shaw added. “And not many people got to have the access to him that I had over such a long period of time, from a young boy to a young man, to a mature man.