Sports year in review: Bryant's death shocked LA, the world
LOS ANGELES — A melancholy sky settled over Los Angeles that morning, the weather cool and gray north of downtown, almost to county line. I had been on the Ventura Freeway only a few minutes when news came over the radio, the first report of a helicopter crash above Calabasas. I couldn't help looking as I drove past, as if there might be a glimmer of fire or black smoke in the distance, something to mark the spot, to mark the moment, but the hills were shrouded in mist.
Somewhere up there, Kobe Bryant had died.
It was the sort of thing that can put you off-balance, the loss of someone
