Date: 12/08/2012
Location: North Greenwich Arena, London
Final Basketball USA - Spain
What a sad news. Kobe Bryant has passed away. I just see Twitter exploding.
It reminds me a lot of the Twitterstorm that appeared when Michael Schumacher got his skiing accident. Then you know; this is not just a famous sportsman that has passed away. An icon is lost. The coming days the sports world will pay tribute to this Basketball legend.
I remember vividly the day, somewhere in February 2012 that we laid our hands on 2 tickets for the Basketball final of the London 2012 Olympic Games. “We will see the Dream team!”.
Every time since Barcelona’92 the ‘’Dream team’’ was thé most popular Olympic event, together with the 100m sprint. That day of the final in London, the stadium was crowded with desperate fans:” Ticket Wanted. Ticket Swap”. We could sell our tickets for a small car.
We did not do that of course. We witnessed the Olympic Final. With many stars like Lebron James and Kevin Durant. But with one superstar. Kobe Bryant. That magical number 10 shirt. Giving high fives in the warming up. Already Olympic Champion (Beijing’08) but eager to put another one to his belt.
Earlier that Games we saw the USA beating Nigeria with a staggering Olympic record win of 156-73. The final (Against Paul Gasol & Spain) was surely much closer but at no point you felt that the Dream team would lose. They beat Spain 108-100 and won their 14th golden medal in Olympic basketball history.
What I remember most of Kobe Bryant during that final was not his play (he scored 17 points, way behind Durant (30 points). It was his presence, calm, fully determined, busy with motivating his teammates. He was the dream for the dream team in many aspects.
But most of all he was enjoying the game. Playing with his friends. As if it was just another game. For us it was not just another game. It was a dream…
