Kobe Bryant's other great gift was storytelling

We didn't just lose a basketball legend. We lost a magnificent storyteller.

Kobe Bryant.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Kevork Djansezian, Aerial3/iStock)

The smaller the ball, the more formidable the literature. So said the storied journalist and founder of The Paris Review, George Plimpton, in his 1992 "Game Theory of Literature." Nearly 30 years on, it more or less holds true: Golf and baseball are surely the most literary of all the sports, rhapsodized by Updike and Wodehouse, Roth, and, of course, the great athlete-turned-writer Jim Brosnan. But the basketball shelf is "slim," Plimpton wrote; with the basketball clocking in at 29.5 inches, only the beach ball is less graceful, both in hand and prose.

Plimpton died in 2003, when a 25-year-old Kobe Bryant was still in dizzying ascension, although the editor's snobbish sensibilities meant neither Bryant's Mamba Mentality nor "Dear Basketball" likely would have convinced him to rework his theory. Still, while the basketball star's writing might have been modest compared to what he accomplished on the court during his two decades with the Los Angeles Lakers, it is a large part of what makes his tragic, premature death on Sunday so hard to absorb. Kobe Bryant clearly had so many stories left to tell.

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.