When UTEP basketball coaches Rodney Terry and Kevin Baker remember Kobe Bryant, their first thoughts didn't go to his prodigious feats on the court.
Their thoughts went to the person he had become in the 41st year of his life that ended Sunday in a helicopter crash.
"I just got home from church, I was starting my prep work on Middle Tennessee and I got a text from a friend of mine that it had happened," Terry said. "It's something that knocks you right back. We lost a giant, not just as a basketball player, but the impact he was still going to make with young people and people in general.