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0:37
This is a Donut Life Man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:43
On Sunday, January 26th of 2020, just before 10 a.m. Pacific time here in the United States,
0:49
a helicopter crashed in Calabasas, California, killing a celebrity, a celebrity's daughter,
0:56
and seven, I guess we can call them regular people. So the victims by name, I guess I can start with
1:01
the victims that you likely don't know. And that's John Altobelli, 56, his wife Carrie, Altobelli,
1:09
at 46, and his daughter, Alyssa Atabelli, age 13. There was also Christina Mauser, age 38,
1:17
Ara Zobian, age 50, and Sarah Chester, 45, and her daughter, Peyton Chester, 13. The victims that
1:25
you'll likely know and that the entire world has not been able to stop talking about is Kobe Bryant
1:30
died at the age of 41 in his daughter, John A. Bryant, age 13. So here's the thing about this
1:38
news whenever it came down. So Sunday morning, whenever I woke up, I woke up getting ready to go
1:43
church. I had a late night the night before I was on the road. And so whenever I got back,
1:47
the moment I woke up, I just didn't feel right for whatever reason. And some of you guys that
1:51
listened to this podcast were around me that day. It was just one of those days where I probably
1:55
should have just stayed home. But I went out and did, you went to church and, you know, went and
1:59
trained and all that. But it was just just a weird day. So I get home from church. And I'm just like,
2:04
I got to go lay down. I just got to go do something else. Like maybe I can reset. And so I lay down
2:09
and I wake up like two hours later. So I mean, I, this was not like a power nap. This was a full
2:13
long deal. And I wake up and I do, you know, what's kind of a bad habit for me, which is right when
2:18
I wake up, I lean over, grab my phone and start scrolling and see what happened. And I just couldn't
2:23
have prepared myself for what I saw. I mean, just text after text after text, after text,
2:27
news, breaking news, breaking news, you know, all over the place. And it was about the death of
2:32
Kobe Bryant and that he had died in a helicopter crash. And by the time that I'm reading all this,
2:38
I'm, you know, kind of getting the junk out of my eyes. And I'm trying to like figure this out. And
2:42
so I immediately run in the living room, I turn on a television, try to get on a news channel or
2:46
on ESPN. And at this time, we're still in the middle of people saying that, Hey, Rick Fox has
2:50
died. And you know, all of Kobe's daughters were on the helicopter with him. And they're all dead.
2:55
And then all the different things, there were only them on the helicopter. There were a lot of
2:58
people in the helicopter. It was just still in this deluge of craziness. But the one thing
3:03
remained the same, which is that the legend, the icon of the game of basketball, and you know, he
3:08
was transitioning to be an icon of much other many other things, Kobe Bryant had passed away.
3:12
And what we can only consider to be a tragic accident with the helicopter. And where I sit right
3:17
now, the Tuesday after recording this, we don't know exactly what happened with the helicopter. We
3:22
do know that local authorities that had helicopters that day, they said it was that it was too foggy.
3:27
The conditions weren't good to have their helicopters in the air. And so they didn't
3:30
have any helicopters in the air. But you know, that that was the news. And to be honest with you,
3:35
the reactions from the world have been constant. Here I am too on Tuesday. And as I'm scrolling
3:40
through Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, we're still at maybe 50% or more of the posts are about
3:46
Kobe Bryant. This is just, we're getting reactions from all other places. I was going to kind of
3:51
gather some different reactions from different places. But it would have literally been impossible,
3:55
guys. I mean, you've seen it. I mean, you exist in the world. You've obviously seen it from your
3:59
personal Facebook pages to the pages of other people. But the thing that's so interesting about
4:04
this is it doesn't seem to have an end. It's not just sports people talking about this,
4:08
not just basketball people, right? I mean, we've had current presidents, former presidents, we've had,
4:13
you know, a list academy award winning celebrities, we've had dignitaries from other countries,
4:18
we've had every different pocket of life that you can possibly think of tech books, you know,
4:23
podcasts, whatever, they're all kind of giving their, their thoughts on this, this tragedy and this
4:29
death. Yeah, people that knew Kobe Bryant well, that knew his daughter, Gianna, who they call Gigi.
4:34
And then we start hearing about the other victims and those types of things. And it's just,
4:38
the reactions are just still unfolding. And it's kind of one of those things where you just,
4:42
you're not really sure where it's going to end. And if it will ever end, surely we will all get
4:46
on with our lives. I mean, even after 9/11, it took us a while, but we all kind of get on
4:50
with things to a certain degree, but we kind of come to a point of remembrance at different points.
4:55
But I think the thing that is interesting, there's a lot of things that are interesting
4:58
here, but I feel like I maybe miscalculated Kobe Bryant's influence. And that has a lot to do with
5:05
the number of people, the sheer number of people that went to social media or had their lawyers
5:10
release a statement, whatever the situation was, I just didn't, I guess really realized he was that
5:15
far reaching. I knew he was a global icon. Obviously, I'm an NBA fan. I followed his career, but I just
5:21
guess I didn't know it was that big. And the other thing I feel like I miscalculated was just
5:27
him as an impactful person, right? You know, I've got a lot of friends
5:32
that have grown up Kobe Bryant fans. They've been Kobe Bryant fans since he's retired. They still
5:36
don't shut up about him. Like that's, that's just kind of who they were and kind of what they did.
5:42
But he had a direct impact seemingly on so many people, so many people. And you can just see that
5:49
by the reactions of people when they're going on ESPN or by that evening, by Sunday evening,
5:54
there was kind of a joint report on ABC and ESPN kind of showing the same thing. And you're seeing
5:59
these incredibly well known people. I mean, you got Jerry West on television basically saying,
6:05
it's the second worst day of his life. The only, excuse me, the only other worst day was when he
6:10
lost his brother in Korea, right? I mean, you got, again, I don't want to get into saying this guy
6:16
said this and this gal said that. But the stories have just, that have just been rolling out on
6:20
online and the anecdotes or whatever the situations may have been this one time when I met Kobe or
6:25
man, I spent a month, a month with him and this is what happened. It seems to be that he had a
6:29
tremendous impact on an unbelievable amount of people, even the people that he maybe didn't
6:33
have direct influence on just the mamba mentality. Again, for those of you who don't know, his
6:38
nickname was the black mamba and he just kind of had that killer instinct kind of kind of a field
6:42
to him. There are a lot of people that have just been hashtag mamba mentality. Well, before he died,
6:47
and that's just kind of their way of getting through things. Now, now for me, what I can say
6:51
personally is early in Kobe Bryant's career, I was a huge fan of his because I think it was in
6:56
junior high whenever the Lakers, the Shaq Lakers won the three Pete and Kobe was, you know, Robin
7:00
to Shaq's Batman. And that was just, that was the Showtime Lakers, like the in the modern area. And
7:06
it was an incredible thing to watch. And I loved watching them. I can still remember jumping out
7:11
of my seat whenever Kobe Bryant threw that alley oop to Shaquille O'Neal against the Portland
7:15
trailblazers. I think that was in the Western Conference finals, but just an incredible team to
7:20
watch. But then, you know, like with a lot of people with the rape allegations that came up in 2003,
7:25
it kind of made me look a little closer at him whenever he eventually did come back,
7:29
especially after he was not exonerated from those charges. And you know, then then his game just
7:34
kind of became annoying. It's like, I don't really like him. He's a ball hog. He's of this. He ran
7:37
Shaq out of town. I'm a huge Shaq fan. And so I guess you could say that I wasn't really overall a
7:43
Kobe Bryant fan. This is not a guy that I wished ill will in any way, shape or form. But there were
7:48
just certain things he would do in his career that I was just like, man, just didn't really care.
7:52
He wasn't my kind of guy. You know, I was more of a LeBron guy until, you know, he kind of,
7:57
he's been a little bit weird and woke the last couple of years. But then I was a Kevin Durant
8:01
guy and a Russell Westbrook guy because, you know, we've got the thunder now here in Oklahoma City.
8:04
But that that's just kind of how it is. But don't let that I just wanted to kind of be up front with
8:08
you that I was never really a huge Kobe Bryant fan. And the thing that I think will be interesting
8:12
for today's podcast is that I feel like that's almost better for me to kind of talk about the
8:16
things that I feel like I'm going to talk about because I'm not looking at it through rose colored
8:19
glasses. I certainly didn't hate the guy. It's not like I'm a Celtics fan. And I just hated Kobe Bryant.
8:23
But it's just, you know, I didn't look at him the same way as even some of my close friends did.
8:28
But I can say this, regardless of what you think about Kobe Bryant, regardless of what you think
8:33
about sports or celebrity or anything else, this has brought up a lot of questions for people,
8:38
this, this Kobe Bryant death. Because again, it's been wall to wall coverage for the last 48 hours.
8:42
As I'm sitting here right now, I mean, Kobe Bryant's been dead for just over 48 hours.
8:46
And so I jotted down these questions and I just want to kind of flow through them because I know
8:50
this isn't a normal podcast. It's not on a normal day, but I think this is obviously pertinent to
8:54
you guys and everybody else listening in the audience. The first thing I guess this kind of
9:00
brought up for me is what other deaths have we as Americans experienced like the death of Kobe Bryant.
9:08
I would just try to think of something. And really the first thing that came to mind
9:12
was for me, Stan Musial and Oscar Tavares. Okay. So if you don't know who those guys are, Stan
9:18
Musial is one of the greatest major league baseball players of all time, but he is the single greatest
9:21
Saint Louis Cardinal of all time. And of all the teams on the planet, that's the team I support
9:25
and follow the most. That is the Saint Louis Cardinals. And so Stan Musial died at the age of 92.
9:30
And I remember, I remember that personally affecting me and kind of getting me emotional.
9:35
But then not, you know, too far away from when ever Stan Musial passed away, Oscar Tavares died.
9:42
And so Oscar Tavares was one of the young up and comers for the Cardinals. He had barely made
9:46
it to the big leagues, but he was the guy that they were going to basically build the franchise
9:50
around. A 22 year old superstar who passed away because he was driving drunk and lost control of
9:55
his car, I believe is down the Dominican Republican and he passed away. I remember thinking at that
10:01
time, whenever Oscar Tavares died, I remember being so caught up with emotion, not because I
10:05
knew the guy like I met him once, but it wasn't that big of a deal. I didn't really know the guy.
10:09
But the thing is, is we were mourning Stan Musial because of what was what we knew about him.
10:15
And we were mourning Oscar Tavares as Cardinals fans because of what wasn't, right? Because of
10:20
what hadn't happened yet. Because of what we perceived to be future glory, right? For Cardinals fans
10:25
and for Oscar himself. So that's the first one that came to mind, but that maybe doesn't resonate
10:30
with you guys if you're not a Cardinals fan. But again, I kind of stayed in my baseball mindset.
10:33
Then Jose Fernandez came up who died in a boating accident at the age of 24. He was a pitcher for
10:38
the Miami Marlins. Then Tyler Skaggs, 27 year old pitcher for the Angels that just died this last
10:43
year, came out that he died of an overdose and accidental overdose. We had your Donna Ventura
10:49
that he was a pitcher for the Royals, a 25 year old pitcher that died a while back. I believe he
10:53
died in the Dominican Republic as well. But that's just kind of where my brain went. But I remember
10:58
those, those being impactful, those deaths, but they were a little bit more centralized. Like I
11:03
remember whenever Jose Fernandez died, the Miami Marlins team, their first game back. All the team
11:09
is super emotional. They're all wearing his number in D Gordon. This is one of the most incredible
11:13
things I've ever seen. If you haven't seen this, I may try to find it and tweet it out or something
11:17
like that. But D Gordon, who is a one hole, who is a very, very small guy, who's not particularly
11:24
possesses quite a bit of power. He goes up, he's a left hander, right? He actually goes up to the
11:29
box and takes a pitch right handed off of Bartello Colone. And again, he just was going to take a
11:35
pitch because Jose Fernandez was a right handed guy. So he comes up to the plate and goes right
11:39
handed. He he goes back to the dugout, switches out his helmet for a left handed batter's helmet.
11:43
And then he gets into the left batter's box. And a few pitches later, he hits a home run.
11:47
And before he can even round third base, he's already crying. I mean, everybody in the dugouts
11:54
crying, the people in stands are crying. It was so emotional. And even to this day, like I get
11:58
choked up thinking about that because they so clearly loved this kid. But again, he wasn't a
12:03
global icon. He he was a he was a budding star in the world of Major League Baseball. So then I
12:10
started thinking about, okay, what about outside of sports? And I thought about Michael Jackson.
12:14
I seem to remember when Michael Jackson died at the age of 50 again, with with all his baggage,
12:18
even the baggage that people knew about before the HBO documentary came out. Everyone was talking
12:23
about that. I remember the huge ceremony that they had for him. I remember Paul Walker. When Paul
12:29
Walker died, if you don't know him, he's he's one of the main characters, Fast and Furious. You
12:33
probably seen his movies, you definitely recognize him. He died at the age of 40 from a car accident.
12:36
And that was a sudden death. But you know, Paul Walker was a movie star, but he, you know, wasn't
12:41
maybe the biggest movie star. I thought about when I was a kid, Alia passed away. So if Alia,
12:47
the R&B singer, she passed away at the age of 22, I believe she died in a car or not a car crash
12:51
plane crash. And I remember that being like a huge deal when I was in elementary school, like,
12:56
Oh my gosh, Leah died. I guess around that same time, Princess Diana died in her thirties.
13:01
And that was a huge thing. That was kind of this global thing like, Oh my gosh, this this thing
13:05
happened. But even after I thought through all that guys, I know it took me a second to kind of
13:10
talk through that. None of it felt like what we're feeling right now with Kobe Bryant. And I know
13:14
we have a recency bias with a lot of things like this, like we think it's even bigger or more
13:19
important because it's happening right now. But this, this just feels fundamentally different.
13:23
And I guess it feels fundamentally different because he died with his daughter
13:29
because he seemingly had such a great and close relationship with his 13 year old daughter has
13:35
one of four daughters that he had. He seemed she seemed to be the apple of his eye, you know,
13:42
and just the video and pictures you see them to you could tell that there's a definite affection
13:47
there. Maybe it was the fact that there were other teenagers on that flight. And in the pilot
13:53
passing away, like it was just there was a lot. It just seemed like a lot. This was just
13:58
different. And I can't exactly explain why. But another question I asked outside of, you know,
14:03
what other deaths have we experienced that are kind of like this?
14:06
Is this a weird to mourn the passing of someone that you don't know personally?
14:10
And I'm certainly not the first person to come up with this question. I think a lot of people
14:14
have kind of thought to themselves or maybe thought whenever they're thinking about others
14:18
that that's kind of weird. Like when I talk to my wife, you know, she's on Facebook and even,
14:22
you know, she's not a huge sports fan. She obviously knows who Kobe Bryant is, but she's just like,
14:26
why are so many people so sad? They didn't even know the guy. And I know where she's coming from
14:30
because it is a little weird, I would say, to mourn the passing of someone that you didn't know
14:35
personally. It is a little weird. But I guess that kind of begs the next question, which is it okay
14:41
to mourn the passing of someone that you didn't know personally? And I got to say, yeah, I guess
14:46
it is okay. And I mean, if you read any of the psychological literature or any of those types
14:50
of things, like anytime someone has a profound impact on you, even if you don't know them,
14:56
it could cause you to to go into some sort of a mourning state, right, where you are mourning
15:01
the passing of this person. And I would say sure that that's okay. I still think that it's a little
15:06
bit weird to mourn them. But I'll tell you the people I don't really agree with as the people
15:11
that are like, Oh, you only care about the fact that Kobe died. There's thousands of people that
15:16
died until you do not care about them. The thing about it is guys, is there something called like
15:21
sympathy fatigue? Like you can only be so compassionate and so sympathetic. Like if you mourn the death,
15:28
every tragic passing of everybody on the planet, every car accident, every murder, every, you know,
15:33
natural disaster, you would explode. You would absolutely explode. So I feel like that it is
15:39
fundamentally different. Now, the other question that I guess this brought up for me that I'm
15:44
going to flow in a little bit is what is the difference between grief and sadness? Because I feel
15:49
like people are kind of putting those things in the same category. And I guess for me, when I feel
15:53
grief is when I've arrived, lost something that was incredibly special to me. And that's either a
15:58
person or a dog just to be real with you, right? You know, my dog Roman, whenever he passes,
16:04
it's going to be a problem for a while. And I know that now, right? And this is, you know,
16:09
Lord willing years and years in the future. But I can be sad if my team loses a game.
16:14
I can be sad if my favorite fighter, you know, gets an injury and can't fight. I can be sad if I,
16:19
if I get my wallet stolen, though those types of things, that's sadness.
16:22
Grief is an entirely different thing. You don't mourn sadness, right? You don't go through a
16:27
process of mourning because you're sad, right? But when you're grief stricken, it just seems to be
16:34
wholly different. And the only reason why I bring this up is because I feel like this is the first
16:37
time I've ever had to like think through that. Like some people are feeling sadness and some
16:41
people are grieving the loss of a celebrity basketball player that they've never met.
16:45
Now the next question that it kind of brought up for me as I was thinking through this is,
16:51
is the death of a celebrity more tragic than the death of just, you know, a regular person.
16:58
And I know, you know, that I'm not saying that to be offensive, you know, regular person.
17:03
But this feels different, but is it different? Well, as Christians, we know that it's not.
17:09
We know that when we are made in the image of God, all of us equally,
17:12
whether it's your pastor or the new leader of Isis, they're created in the image of God,
17:18
all the same. What they do with that creation, without a Mago day is obviously very different
17:23
for most people. But the death of a celebrity is no more tragic than the death of a regular
17:28
person if we're talking strictly literally. But when we look at this from a macro sense,
17:34
I think it's clearly different. Because if I were to die, right, there'd be a few thousand people
17:40
that would be very disappointed, maybe tens of thousands of people. If I'm lucky, right,
17:44
that would be disappointed for a bit and then would move on. I think it's safe to say that
17:49
right now there are millions, millions, if not tens of millions, but let's just leave it out
17:55
millions of people that are to this day still directly affected by this grown men that are crying,
18:03
that are overwhelmed with emotion, right? And I'm not getting on them. I'm not getting on them at
18:07
all. Oh, you're crying. That's not what I'm saying. But grown men that are having trouble
18:10
processing the emotions of losing their favorite superstar or even people that weren't necessarily
18:15
a fan of his that are just being affected by the emotions that other people are showing. It's
18:19
kind of like, you know, when someone else yawns you yawn, when someone else cries, you cry. It's
18:23
just like you're feeling their sadness. But this does feel different. And I think it speaks a lot
18:29
to the culture that we're in, not only the connectivity of our culture, right? We feel like
18:33
we grew up with Kobe Bryant because we were able to watch him on television. I mean, 50 years ago,
18:38
you wouldn't be able to watch these guys on television like you watch today. You can't watch
18:41
every single game. You may be caught one game or a handful of games a year, right? Maybe you had
18:46
to watch it in person, but we're so connected. We could follow him on an Instagram, we could
18:50
follow him on Twitter. We can see him being interviewed on late night talk shows. It was like he was
18:54
living with us. And I know for some of you guys, when you've met me, or even for those of you guys
18:59
that haven't met me, you're like, man, God, I feel like I know you already. Well, it's because you've
19:03
been listening to me ranting in my studio for the last couple of years. And it's somehow connected
19:08
with you. So even though you don't know me, you know me to a certain degree, because there's this
19:13
thing where I can just talk into a microphone and then fart it into the internet. And it just goes
19:18
out to everybody that wants to listen to it, right? So there's a connection in some way, shape or form.
19:23
And so the death of a celebrity, I don't think it's more tragic, but it certainly resonates to a
19:29
higher degree. And then, you know, when I thought about that, the next thing I thought about is,
19:34
okay, so what makes a death tragic? Because going back to my example with Stan Musial,
19:39
he died in 92. The guy experienced everything that you could possibly experience on this
19:45
Earth that was positive, right? World championships, MVPs, the adoration of an entire community of
19:51
people, you know, the adoration of people in St. Louis, the, you know, gosh, success in businesses,
19:58
everything you could possibly imagine he had it. But he died at 92. So it was sad, but not tragic
20:04
somehow. But with Kobe, 41 years old, seemingly on this trajectory to do even more great things,
20:11
it seems more tragic. And then it seems even more tragic still that 13 year old girls died on that
20:18
flight, right? The, the most talked about of which is obviously Gigi, but Kobe Ryan's daughter.
20:24
But that's what I've kind of thought about is that that's where we start drawing the line of
20:30
tragedy is he, he went too soon, or she was taken too soon. Now, obviously, we're not going to get
20:35
into a big theological discussion about whether or not they were taken too soon, or whether this
20:39
is a product of sin in a broken world. Like that's not what today's podcast is about. But for me,
20:44
I guess I'll just give you my opinion. What makes a death tragic is when you see a life that is
20:49
stamped out where there was still so much potential. That's not to say that some lives are worth
20:54
more than others. That's not to say that, you know, some lives are preferred more than others.
20:58
But, you know, 13 year old kid, she hadn't quite made her mark yet. You know what I mean?
21:04
And it's really sad. It's really sad for those three girls and, you know, all those girls,
21:10
I believe they all had siblings, surviving parents, you know, it's, it's tremendously tragic.
21:17
But it's, it's more tragic than I think we realize. One thing that we're really focused on right
21:21
now is we're focused on Kobe Bryant's, you know, widow now and the three daughters they left behind.
21:27
But there is an extended Bryant family that no one's really thinking about. There's the extended
21:32
families of the other folks that were on the flight. The other seven people that died. This,
21:36
this is tragic in a lot of ways. Because even if somebody was older, I think the oldest victim was
21:41
what 50 years old, right? It's, it still doesn't feel right. It feels like it shouldn't have went
21:49
down that way. And so, yeah, I guess that's what makes a death tragic is whenever you still see
21:54
so much potential and what people could have done and produced. Now, this is going to be a
21:59
slight change in tone for the podcast, but this has come up several times. So I feel like it's
22:03
worth noting. The question came up for me is, is it is bringing up Kobe's checkered past fair game?
22:08
And spoiler alert, I'll go ahead and give it to you right now. Yes, I do think it is. I do think
22:14
it is, but I'm bringing this up for two reasons. The first reason is because I was actually fairly
22:19
astonished at the coverage by ABC and ESPN. Again, I've called ESPN MSNBC sports, right? That's,
22:25
that's kind of their thing. Because even in some of their montages or some of their video clips
22:30
with Kobe Bryant, they mentioned the stuff in 2003 where he was not only accused of rape, but charged
22:36
with rape. But some people thought that it was actually absolutely insane that somebody would bring
22:42
that up on the day that Kobe Bryant died. We might be able to have a discussion about whether or not
22:47
that was tasteful, but you know, they brought it up and they just kind of left it out there.
22:51
There were people that were eviscerated on Twitter for bringing up articles that were written about
22:56
that case about the DNA evidence about some of those things. And I'm going to share a couple of
22:59
those things with you in the show notes. But I think it's absolutely fair to bring that up about
23:04
Kobe Bryant because here's, here's the thing about Kobe Bryant. This situation that happened back
23:10
in a hotel room in 2003, which I'm sure you're familiar with at this point, there's only one
23:15
person alive right now that knows actually what happened in that room. And that's the alleged victim.
23:20
Kobe Bryant's not here to speak for himself. And I'm not here to relitigate a case that was
23:23
there were actually litigated. But the reality of the situation is, is she claimed that Kobe Bryant
23:29
forcibly raped her. And she stood by that. And her name was dragged through the mud. And, you know,
23:37
this girl was, was not a perfect angel by any stretch of the imagination. A lot of people called
23:41
her a lot of horrible things. But this is a girl that came from a very wealthy family. It didn't seem
23:45
like she needed money. But she made this claim. And a year, I believe, about a year or so after she
23:51
claimed this, she decided that she was not going to testify at trial. So he was formally charged,
23:59
again, not just accused, but formally charged with rape. But this was actually settled in civil
24:04
court, where there was an undisclosed settlement, a settlement of which I don't find any importance
24:09
in, but an undisclosed settlement. But there, as part of the settlement, there was a note that
24:16
that had to be read by by Kobe Bryant or by Kobe Bryant's lawyers, basically taking some
24:21
responsibility for malfeasance in some way, that he wasn't completely on the up and up.
24:26
Basically, it was it was a little bit of a half confession that, you know, maybe everything that
24:30
night wasn't consensual and wasn't quite right. And a lot of people have tried to read in to that,
24:35
that testimony that was given or that statement, rather, that was given in saying like, Oh, well,
24:40
you just said that so he could get out of this and move on with his life and all those types of
24:43
things. But for me, if anyone ever accused me of sexual assault, forcibly raping somebody,
24:51
there is no settlement, there is no agreement that I could come to that would be fair in my
24:56
mind other than complete exoneration. By you retracting your statement and retract retracting
25:02
your lies, and I would be willing to spend every last dime of mine to basically clear my name.
25:07
But that's me personally. I'm not Kobe Bryant. I'm not his legal team, those types of things. So,
25:13
here's the thing, guys, about that situation, because again, I'm not trying to re litigate it or
25:16
try to trample on the memory of a dead man at this point. But at the very, very best Kobe Bryant
25:22
cheated on his wife, something that he was known for doing on multitudes of occasions.
25:27
But at the very worst, he raped somebody. And so why do I even bring this up? The reason why I bring
25:33
this up is because of a second reason. It's because some of the same people that were livid,
25:38
absolutely livid coming out of their skin, angry at people for bringing this up about Kobe Bryant
25:45
are the same people that want to re litigate the lives of dead people. You know, they want to
25:53
basically take down every statue or every mention of some of our founding fathers because they
25:58
they perform the horrific sin of owning people, owning slaves. Okay, you can't have it both ways.
26:07
It's either fair to bring up someone's checkered past, but then look at them in their totality and
26:14
say in total, we feel like they were a good person or a positive person for society or we can't.
26:20
You can't pick and choose because a lot of people wait, they wait until somebody has passed away
26:26
before they take their shots at them. You know, we go back and re litigate comments that John Wayne
26:32
made or or the lady that's saying, God bless America for the Yankees. Like we look back at these
26:36
horrific things that these people may have said or may have done or may have meant or whatever the
26:39
situation is, we try to imbune on them some sort of a, a real tactic like this is what they were
26:45
trying to say and do. We're trying to give them motive and yet we have no idea. And so that's the
26:50
thing that I find very interesting about this is again, I feel like it's fair because it's part
26:54
of the Kobe Bryant story. Now, it could be part of his story in that you will never see him any
26:59
other way than a rapist, which that's how some people see him, or she's part of a story that says,
27:03
Hey, he, he did something on this night and it wasn't on the up and up, but he lived a positive
27:10
trajectory of his life ever since then, you know, was a, was a model family man for every way that
27:15
we could tell a model father very close with his kids, whatever the situation may be. But again,
27:20
I feel like it's incredibly disingenuous for people to say, Hey, we shouldn't talk about that
27:24
right now because it's too new, because if you can say it whenever he's alive, you should be
27:30
able to say it in depth as well. I remember these people that are getting just destroyed for sharing
27:34
these old articles, these articles were written whenever he was like retiring. There was one
27:38
article from, I think it was from the Hollywood reporter or something like that where they were
27:42
basically like this was around the time he was retiring and everybody's basically swinging from
27:46
his, you know, what's and, you know, saying he's the greatest and this and all that and he scored
27:50
60 points in his last game. And this is all the greatest thing. That's whenever they wrote these
27:53
articles about, Hey, you remember the guy that was charged with rape and was never acquitted?
27:57
He was never convicted, but he was also never acquitted. So, and again, I'm not necessarily
28:01
giving you my read one way or the other. For me personally, uh, I don't know what happened.
28:06
The, the evidence is fairly damning, I would say, but, but the woman making the claims wasn't
28:12
fairly trustworthy. It's at the very best money, right? I mean, it wasn't an open shut case, but
28:19
it was, there was enough there to charge the guy. And so I, I guess where I would,
28:24
where I would fall on all of this is when I think about Kobe Bryant, I think about the basketball
28:29
player. I still think about the horror, the horrible thing that he may have done to that woman in a
28:34
hotel room in Colorado. Like I still think about those things, but since that can't be proven,
28:39
I can't just assume that it happened. You know, it's, we still live in a country where you're
28:44
innocent until proven guilty and I feel like he should be afforded that at least in its most basic
28:49
form. The guy may have been a dog and he might not be the best role model when it comes to being a man,
28:54
but he did some amazing things on the court. I mean, for me, when I think about Kobe Bryant,
28:59
actually the first thing I think about is when he blew his Achilles tendon, went to the foul line,
29:02
made two foul shots and walked off the court. That's pretty dang gangster, right? Again,
29:08
I'm not saying if he did something in the, in the hotel room in Colorado that that's okay,
29:12
because he's a cool basketball player. All I'm saying is we just don't freaking know.
29:16
We just don't know. I wasn't a huge fan of the guy. I respected his tenacity. If he was on my team,
29:22
I would have loved him, but he wasn't. So I hated him. It was one of those types of things. But,
29:25
but again, I feel like I've spent too much time on this, this point that I wanted to. But again,
29:30
it is completely fair to bring up his checkered past. Yes, it's completely fair to bring up his
29:33
checkered past even in light of his tragic death, his tragic demise. But you know, yes, it's still
29:38
completely fair, I would say. The last thing I would say here is what do we do with our sadness
29:44
then? Because I know a lot of people that are legitimately sad. I'm personally not that sad. I
29:49
feel, I feel really, really bad for the families. I feel really bad for the people that passed away.
29:54
It's a very tragic situation, but I seemingly live in darkness sometimes where I'm so aware
29:59
of the depravity and the death and the horrific things that are happening around the world where
30:04
this one rolled off my shoulders a little bit quicker than it has for others. But for those of
30:08
you that are sad or you know people that are legitimately sad, what do we do with that sadness?
30:14
And everyone kind of has their own self-help book approach to this and live every life to the
30:19
fullest and live every day as if it's your last and all that kind of stuff. And they're not wrong.
30:24
Those things are true, but to go even a little bit deeper than that, I think it's important that
30:29
we live with a purpose. Not that we shouldn't live with plans, right? Because some people feel like,
30:35
oh, I can't die. I've got all these plans. I've got all these things on the calendar. I've got
30:38
all these things I got to do. But when you don't live with purpose and if your time comes to an
30:44
abrupt end, then you will have left pretty much nothing behind. And so for some of you that this
30:51
death or maybe even this conversation, this podcast is going to spurn you to do something.
30:55
Maybe it's going to be to start your own podcast, write a blog, you know, write a letter to somebody
31:00
forgiving them. Something's going to come out of this. So I really don't care what your opinion
31:06
of Kobe Bryant is. I don't care. I don't care if you're like, oh, why are we talking so much
31:10
about this basketball player? I don't want to talk about basketball player. You know, I get it.
31:14
Guys, I'm dude. A thousand kids have been killed by Planned Parenthood today, right?
31:19
That's, that's a tragedy. Like that, that's a horrific thing as well, right? So it's kind of
31:24
hard to be that outraged about everything. But regardless of what you think about Kobe Bryant,
31:28
regardless of what you think about this situation, there is a positive that you can take from this.
31:31
And it is making sure that you do live with a purpose for us as Christians. If you are
31:36
Christian listening to this, this is me talking to you. And if you're not a Christian listening
31:40
to this, or if you're a non Christian that's listening to this, we're glad you're here.
31:43
But maybe this doesn't quite apply to you. But for us, there's a great commission here.
31:47
And we're to leave as big of an impact on this planet, not for our family name,
31:51
not for our bank accounts that we pass on, right? To get taxed later by the government.
31:57
No, we're leaving an impact for the kingdom. We're preparing for the next kingdom, right?
32:03
So the reason why we have to pray in the way that we do for, you know, his will to be done on
32:09
earth as it is in heaven is because everything's broken down here. As evidenced by this, this
32:15
tragic passing and the tragic passings of literally thousands of people every single day.
32:19
But if you live with a purpose, if you've got something that you're striving for,
32:24
if you're trying to better yourself so that you can better others, if you're trying to
32:27
better yourself, so that you can protect others, if you're trying to better yourself so that you
32:31
can provide for others, if you're trying to better yourself so that you can more easily show what
32:36
who God is to people to be a conduit through which the Holy Spirit can work.
32:41
That's a life worth living guys. And so maybe this is a good time for you to shift down a gear or two
32:48
and at least have a conversation with yourself. Start that internal dialogue to say, am I living
32:52
a life that is going to leave a legacy for the kingdom? If you're a non-Christian, are you leaving
32:57
the life that's going to leave a legacy for your family and be positive for those around you?
33:01
It's good stuff to think about. All right, guys, before we let you go, we're going to do a quick
33:04
resilience boost. As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating
33:07
manly resilience. Specifically, we do that by providing content that for just spiritual,
33:11
mental and physical toughness. So for today, I've got three articles for you. The first is a
33:15
really nice article by the LA Times. It's called mother's father's daughter's coaches. Here are the
33:19
nine killed in the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash. So I've felt like this did a really good job of
33:23
kind of personalizing those people that may go unnamed and all the hubbub and media covers these
33:28
days. But then I did leave the other two articles for you for your own review. So one is remember
33:33
when Kobe Bryant was charged with rape. I didn't forget and neither should you. It's a Hollywood
33:37
reporter article. And then another one, Kobe Bryant's disturbing rape case, the DNA evidence,
33:41
the accuser story and the half confession from the Daily Beast. Here's the thing, guys, again,
33:45
this is not for me to pile on. But I know for most people, they don't even know where to find
33:49
this material. So I'm honestly just giving this to you so that you have it. I'm not trying to make
33:53
any particular point. I feel like I was very, very clear about the Kobe Bryant thing that at the very
33:58
best, we have no idea what the hell happened in that room. So we're just going to go with that.
34:02
Guys, thanks so much for listening to the podcast. You really do appreciate it. If you would,
34:05
please subscribe on Apple podcasts, iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, or Google Play and refer
34:09
your friends to listen and share this on social media. If we deserve a five star review,
34:13
please leave us one and I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the entirety of 2020.
34:17
So if you want me to come speak to your team on your podcast at your men's event, hit me up
34:21
info at undaunted.life. Again, that's i-n-f-o at undaunted.life. The website is www.undaunted.life.
34:28
And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undauntedlife or facebook.com/undauntedlife.
34:33
Check out our free devotionals on the eversion Bible app. Just search undaunted life under plans.
34:37
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music
34:40
library for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song King of Sorrow,
34:45
which is author latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links are in the description.
34:49
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
34:53
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
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[Music]