The word “legend” is often applied to sports figures, but when discussing Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant, any other descriptor seems downright inappropriate. The son of NBA player Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, Kobe was drafted straight out of high school in 1996 by the Charlotte Hornets, who made the outrageous error of near-immediately trading him to the Lakers. Ferociously intelligent and physically dominant, Bryant made an immediate splash in the NBA, becoming the youngest-ever All-Star at the age of 19 — and as part of one of the most patently unfair tandems in basketball history with fellow legend Shaquille O’Neal, he won three consecutive championships between 2002 and 2004. More rings, MVP awards, and accolades followed until his retirement in 2016 — and he was only a few short years into that well-earned retirement when tragedy struck.

On January 26, 2020, Bryant and eight others — including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna — boarded a helicopter in Orange County, California, en route to a youth basketball tournament at which Bryant was to coach his daughter’s team. Due to what would later be determined to be pilot error combined with poor visibility, the craft barreled full-speed into the side of a hill in Calabasas, killing everyone on board; Bryant was just 41. It was a tragedy that shocked the entire world, as summed up for the Los Angeles Times by Bryant’s friend and fellow Laker giant Earvin “Magic” Johnson: “Your stomach just turned upside down, because I was like, ‘Nah, not Kobe,'” he said. “He’s Superman … Then sure enough, it was confirmed, and man, I just broke down.”