Kevin Gorman: Kobe Bryant's death brings back Pittsburgh memories of his 'Mamba Mentality'

Rick Bell is a hoops junkie, so he was watching the Maryland-Indiana college basketball game when he received a text message from his son, RJ, a junior guard at Geneva.

Did you hear about Kobe?

No, Bell replied, asking what happened.

He was killed in a helicopter crash.

That was the news that stunned the sportsworld Sunday and made our hearts drop: Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest to ever play the game of basketball, was dead at age 41.

Bell summed it up for all of us: “I’m in the state of shock.”

The news only got worse when it was confirmed Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, was one of the nine people aboard the helicopter who died when it crashed near Calabasas, Calif.

As I attempted to confirm, then comprehend the news, my mind flashed back to the first time I saw Bryant play. Even before he made the jump from high school to the NBA and became a five-time champion who scored 33,643 career points, Bryant had become a household name at Lower Merion High School.

As the Naismith national prep player of the year, the 6-foot-6 guard was on his way to being billed as the next Michael Jordan when he was the star attraction at the 1996 McDonald’s All-American Game at Civic Arena. I covered that game, sitting courtside and typing my story on a plastic Radio Shack TRS-80 laptop that operated on three AA batteries.

John Miller of Blackhawk was the coach of Bryant’s East team, and Bell, then of Peters Township, and the late Don Graham of North Catholic were the assistants. When contacted Sunday afternoon, Miller and Bell were still in total disbelief about Bryant’s death.

“It makes you think of Roberto Clemente,” Miller said of the Pittsburgh Pirates great who perished in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve in 1972. “He’s here, and then he’s gone. It’s almost like you couldn’t believe it. This is a sad day.”

For Miller, it was a day he didn’t think could get any worse after both of his son’s college basketball programs suffered one-point losses this weekend. Sean’s Arizona Wildcats lost to arch-rival Arizona State on Saturday night, and Archie’s Indiana Hoosiers were beaten by Maryland on Sunday.

“Arch called me a couple of hours ago and said, ‘This just puts it all in perspective. I took a loss, but we lost Kobe,’ ” Miller said. “The games are the games, but this is life.”

Life always seemed so good for Bryant. He was at the epicenter of the basketball world when he came to Pittsburgh for the McDonald’s All-American Game, as speculation centered around whether Bryant, Jermaine O’Neal and Tim Thomas would jump straight to the NBA. (Bryant was drafted 13th overall by Charlotte, then traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, where he spent his entire 20-year career).

Some may recall Kobe Bryant coming to Pittsburgh in 1996 as a high school senior to play in the McDonald's All-American Game at the Civic Arena and compete in the Slam Dunk Contest at Fitzgerald Field House. Here are a few shots from our archives. pic.twitter.com/Zyk0qP4WQn

— Ryan Recker (@RyanRecker) January 26, 2020

What Miller recalled about the McDonald’s All-American Game was how O’Neal hadn’t arrived yet from South Carolina, leaving the East team only nine players for their first practice. So Miller called his wife and had her send their son, Archie, then a junior guard at Blackhawk, to scrimmage with the East.

“Kobe and ‘Rip’ Hamilton really got a kick out of him and said, ‘Coach, is that really your son? He can play,’ ” Miller said of Archie, who played at N.C. State and is now head coach at Indiana. “I never forgot that. It’s something that sticks in your mind.”

What Bell remembers is how Bryant was “an absolute gentleman” who was “mature beyond his years, as a player and person” but showcased his killer instinct when he announced during a team meeting that the East would be playing for keeps.

“Kobe said, and I rememeber it distinctly to this day, ‘I want to win,’ ” Bell said. “He wasn’t just there to have fun. He verbalized it: He wanted to win. That was the first thing, how competitive he was in an all-star setting, when not everybody plays the hardest. That ‘Mamba Mentality,’ you could see it when he was a senior in high school.”

On a team loaded with future NBA players Stephen Jackson, Hamilton and O’Neal, Bryant made 5 of 11 shots and scored 13 points as the East cruised to a 120-105 victory. The MVP honors, however, went to point guard Shaheen Holloway. Bell laughs when recalling how there were about three dozen dunks in the game, including a breakaway jam and a double-clutch dunk by Bryant. That’s more dunks than he saw in his entire WPIAL career coaching at Peters Township and Canon-McMillan.

Rick Bell, an East assistant coach in the 1996 McDonald’s All-American Game at Civic Arena, has framed photos of Kobe Bryant hanging in his classroom at Canon-McMillan. “He wanted to win,” Bell said. “That ‘Mamba Mentality,’ you could see it when he was a senior in high school.” pic.twitter.com/Gq6UyIUY8w

— Kevin Gorman (@KGorman_Trib) January 27, 2020

Bell cherishes the McDonald’s All-American memories so much that, as a Christmas present, his daughter, Angela, had his confirmation letter, the rosters from a game program and a team photo taken from a Mount Washington overlook framed for him. Bell has that and a page of individual photos of the “Dream Team ’96” displayed in his first-floor classroom at Canon-Mac, and stopped by the school after Mass on Sunday to share a photo of it.

“To be a part of that was just a tremendous honor,” Bell said. “Then, to follow his career from where he was as a senior in high school — and he was pretty doggone good — to NBA stardom was really neat. Those are two things I’m really proud of because it was a tremendous honor that he played in it, one of the greatest players in NBA history.”

Now, one of the greatest is gone, and those of us who watched him are still in a state of shock, left to forever remember where we were when we heard about Kobe.