By now, we’ve all heard the news: Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna were among nine people who died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., on Sunday morning.
The whole thing is terrible. It also doesn’t feel real. Partly because there was no preamble, warning or rationale. And partly because this was Bryant. Few athletes have ever seemed more invincible or purposeful. This was the root of his success, of course. That he could make it seem as if random occurrences didn’t plague him as they do the rest of us. That, if you just tried hard enough, you could control everything in your orbit.