How the African-American tradition of "Homegoing" will help us to celebrate Kobe's life and legacy...

Sports often fill gaps for us that we don’t even realize we have. They help us heal, they bring us incredible joy and sometimes inconsolable losses. While I’ve always preferred sports to movies, its because the characters in sports are real. They control the story lines. They inspire us and make us imagine what it would be like to be a real-life superhero. They give us hope.

I never met Kobe, but watching him was inspiring. Watching him with his daughters, watching him resurrect his relationship with his wife and watching him find peace and success after basketball when so many other athletes fail. As long as sports exists, little black boys and girls, who don’t get to see themselves fly on the movie screen, can see themselves soar on television in sports arenas. And that matters. 

Many kids grew up watching superheroes: super-human figures who possess special abilities to overcome the odds. Whether it was Superman speeding faster than a locomotive, or Spiderman leaping from a skyscraper, many of us dreamed of having the power to save the day. Superheroes give us hope; the hope that we can do the impossible. The hope that we can be great.

But up until recently, for many black children there was something missing in the superheroes we saw on the screen. They almost never looked like us. Superman, Batman, Spiderman, heck even Aquaman, were all white. While we still donned their costumes for Halloween, in the back of our collective minds, we all knew that they were not us and we were not them. I could never look like Clark Kent or Peter Parker. My tightly coiled hair certainly never flowed in the wind like Thor’s. Those superheroes were not our superheroes.

Where the movie screen failed us, sports filled the gaps. Black athletes like Michael Jordan and Ken Griffey Jr. soared above the rim and scaled tall walls to catch fly balls. They were giants, literally, with seemingly superhuman talents to dunk, dribble and hit a ball unbelievable distances. And if we were lucky enough, we’d get a chance to don their costumes too, mimicking their signature moves, flipping our hats to the back and yelling their names while trying to become them.

Like so many fans, I’m heartbroken that one of our black superheroes met his end. But I am grateful to have had the experience of watching Kobe put on his purple and gold cape and let us know that we all are capable of being super if we work hard enough for it.