Georgia basketball coach remembers sharing court with Kobe Bryant in high school
Tom Crean had no idea just how different this practice was going to be.
He shook it up, splitting his Georgia team into two groups. When the second group showed up, it brought some devastating news: Los Angeles Lakers legend and NBA icon Kobe Bryant, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, had died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.
“The first thing that comes to my mind is that, in this world, we have no security — no eternal security — without God,” Crean said Monday, a day after Bryant’s death. “We never know. You just never know what is going to happen the moment you walk out your door, the moment you leave.”
The accident has cast a shadow over the entire basketball community and the world beyond. But one member of Georgia’s staff shared a unique connection to Bryant.
John Linehan, an assistant on the Bulldogs staff, played against Bryant in high school in Pennsylvania: Linehan at Chester High School and Bryant at Lower Merion. The duo also spent time on the same summer AAU team.
Linehan was at practice when he heard the news from a team manager. After questioning what he’d been told, he went to his office and received the tragic confirmation.
“I was frozen,” Linehan said.
The news surely came as a stunning realization of his own mortality. At 41 years old, Linehan is the same age as Bryant.
The two dueled on numerous occasions in high school, often in the state playoffs. Linehan made quite the impression on the future NBA Hall of Famer — when asked during the 2001 playoffs who was the toughest defender he ever faced, Bryant said, “You guys may laugh, but it’s a guy named John Linehan.”
“It’s an extreme honor for someone like that to say something like that about me,” Linehan said. “It’s followed me throughout my entire career and it’s helped me a lot. So, I can only thank him so much for what he’s done for me and my life and the friendship we had.”
Like so many of Bryant’s other relationships, the niceties didn’t extend to the hardwood. In the two’s senior season, Bryant’s Lower Merion squad eliminated Chester from the state playoffs. Bryant put up 39 points.
“Twenty-seven from the free throw line, though,” Linehan quipped.
When they were paired up on AAU teams, Linehan saw another side of Bryant. It’s the side that played a large part in making the kid from Philadelphia a 18-time All-Star, two-time NBA Finals MVP and five-time NBA champion.
The team, full of 16- and 17-year old kids, was staying in a hotel the night before the game. Linehan said he wanted to do what kids that age do - play video games, go to the mall and just generally spend time goofing around.
But Linehan’s future all-world teammate had none of that. At around 8 or 8:30 p.m., the lights went out. They had a game the next morning, and the Mamba said it was bedtime.
“He came out the next morning and put on a show,” Linehan. “My point is, his approach to the game of basketball and to the game of life was just like that. It was about business early on. That’s something that we should all look up to.”
Now, Linehan is in charge of his own group of young kids. Just like he looked up to his favorite player Michael Jordan growing up, so too did this generation of players idolize Bryant.
Upon hearing the news, star freshman Anthony Edwards said what many of the players were surely thinking, a thought that has echoed among young players around the globe, from the NBA to rec centers and everywhere in between, a sentiment that shows just how large of a shadow he cast, and how grand the void is upon his death.
“I wanted to be like him when I was growing up.”
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 8:44 AM.