What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Kobe Bryant dead in helicopter crash - TMZ (2 Viewers)

That truly sucks but if any media outlet had that story sourced they are running with it. There isn’t a news org in the world that wouldn’t have. 
Yeah, I don't get why people were so mad at TMZ for reporting it.  I mean, I get they want the privacy and not to find out from the news.  But those days are gone.  They've been gone for decades.  Even before social media, but more so now.

I can't blame a news organization for reporting a story that they got the scoop on.  That's just how media works.  

 
That truly sucks but if any media outlet had that story sourced they are running with it. There isn’t a news org in the world that wouldn’t have. 
Yeah.  And as sad as it is, it might be better this way.  If news organizations waited, there could be Internet rumors running wild for hours.

 
sounds like a spacial awareness issue.  i suppose he was trying to go to VNY and simple didn’t realize where he was in relation to 101 (further west).  same happened to JFK.  you just don’t know where you are in relation to your surroundings.

 
I thought the new norm for media disclosure was public figures are fair game once information is vetted. The policy on releasing news on the general public was wait until the family was notified to name names.

 
If I found out my child died that way, I don’t know that I’d be safe for years outside of a straight jacket towards whomever made the decision to run with it.
Not to sound uncaring given your personal situation, but I am guessing you and your kids are not considered public figures and thus there would be a much greater attempt to withhold names and information.

I am not saying that the way things are done now is proper, but IIRC there are different standards for public figures as they are considered newsworthy. Right or wrong, TMZ breaking the story could easily be the biggest news item they ever broke. If it wasn't them, it would have been someone else. Another tweet or something on IG. It's not like the old days when newspapers would just sit on running a story or the 11 o'clock news would run something the next day. Sadly we all live in real time, and there is no denying how huge a story it was. Doesn't make it right, but it makes it a cold reality.

 
I just find it criminally uncaring and inhuman. I understand the business dynamic that make it inevitable. Cannot express more compassion to the mother/wife. That’s just an extraordinary thing to have to experience in that way.
Don't know that one way is better than another for such news. We use to have established proprieties and it is likely well to follow them, but in the end it is the news which devastates, not the messenger, or so I tend to believe.

 
My Google Assistant is set to wake me up if I happen to be sleeping through an outrage event, so I can document my outrage via social media on a timely basis.  There's really no point in being outraged about something after everyone else has already expressed their outrage while you were literally sleeping on the job.
True, nobody wants to be the laughing stock of facebook because they were sleepy at the time.

 
Don't know that one way is better than another for such news. We use to have established proprieties and it is likely well to follow them, but in the end it is the news which devastates, not the messenger, or so I tend to believe.
Yeah, I think the most important thing is to have the person in a controlled environment and not, you know, driving and have a google or twitter notification hit their phones about a loved one.  Or walking on a bridge or something.  You don't want the tragedy compounded by an uncontrolled release of information.

 
I just find it criminally uncaring and inhuman. I understand the business dynamic that make it inevitable. Cannot express more compassion to the mother/wife. That’s just an extraordinary thing to have to experience in that way.
I hear you and agree with you, but it is what it is. On the flip side, if a reporter / manger / editor withheld a story to be more sensitive to the survivors and waited for the families to be notified for a story of this magnitude, then all of those people would be out of a job. That's what they do. Like defense lawyers that represent criminals. That's what they get paid for, right or wrong, for better or for worse.

It's also possible that waiting and withholding names could actually be worse sometimes. We had a fatal car accident here involving college age kids and it was all over the news. They went to notify the family of one of the passengers that passed away but no one was home and they didn't have cell numbers for anyone. The mother was on her way to work (90 minute commute) and they were able to track her on highway cameras and sent the state police to notify her. She had been listening to details of the crash the whole way into work. They finally were able to pull her over on the highway to give her the news, but she was then an hour plus away from home. Is that better? Worse? The same? Bad news is bad news no matter where you get it or how you find out about it.

 
There’s a reason the police or military comes to knock on the door. I understand the pressures here for media, and corporations don’t inherently act morally without clear direction. But if it were me, I’d have an internal policy to risk a few bucks not to be the first scum to behave indecently. Then again, that scum will always be there.
Was there a time when this was handled by clergy?  Not relevant to me as I eschew such institutions, just wondering.

 
Because a pilot is trained to fly on instruments when they suddenly find themselves in soup and don’t know whether they are up or down, doesn’t mean a pilot will competently apply training when in the panic of suddenly not knowing if they are upside down. 
From what i've read heli pilots saying, even if they are trained to fly on instruments they rarely if ever do it in copters.  If weather is bad to the point they would need to use instruments they don't fly.

 
From what i've read heli pilots saying, even if they are trained to fly on instruments they rarely if ever do it in copters.  If weather is bad to the point they would need to use instruments they don't fly.
Which is why local police copters were all grounded at the time.

 
Sounds like he rose above the clouds and barely missed a mountaintop and then descended back into the clouds and right into the mountainside. 

 
The helicopter was purchased in 2015 via auction from the state of Illinois. The Listing  is still up on the state auction website with photos of the cockpit and interior.

Built in 1991, the chopper was owned by the state of Illinois from 2007 to 2015, when it was sold for $515,161 to a user named Jim Bagge, as the Chicago Daily Herald reported. Jim Bagge is the name of an executive at Island Express Holding Corp., the helicopter operator to which Bryant’s chopper was licensed, according to business records filed with the California Secretary of State in 2012.

 
Kobe's death is stunning. I think I'm just now becoming able to put words to thoughts/feelings. Obviously you don't expect a thing like that to happen. Just reminds you that there's no guarantees in terms of how much life you have to live, with all the attendant realizations that follow.

As a Lakers fan, I can't really express the value of his career adequately. He was one of the prime movers in giving us fans 5 more championships, and solely responsible for so many riveting experiences. I was at his last game and it seems like that was just yesterday, such a blast.

It seemed he had completed his basketball career (he didn't seem interested in going into coaching or front office work), the thing he was most likely going to remembered for, though he was in the process of doing interesting stuff in other fields, and we probably have been cheated of his accomplishments in those areas. Still, this loss, to me, feels a bit different than when the world lost, say, Stevie Ray Vaughn, who was in the prime of his creative career. Here we lost a newly minted elder statesman of the game, someone who could have given us an insane amount of insight into and perspective on the game. 

I don't know that we'll see his like again, unless the rules are changed. His particular skill set for scoring within the 3 point line is something there's not much room for anymore. His post game was ridiculous for instance. I don't see anyone out there right now who approaches it. @tommyGunZ already mentioned his footwork. I mean, just watching the guy pivot could be entertaining. Most of the "original sources," the guys he stole from are still around, but I doubt we'll see anyone put it all together in quite the way he did again.

And here on this forum, he was so polarizing and compelling. How much time did we spend arguing about the guy in the NBA threads for all kinds of reasons? I know some of that relates to what went on in Colorado, but over time the majority of it was about his basketball game and its place in the history of the sport. Whether you loved him or hated him, he gave us a ton of entertainment. I appreciate that.

I feel terrible for those he left behind, and the others who lost loved ones in the crash. I can't imagine what they're going through.

 
A friend of mine at my brokerage here in Boise, just posted a tribute to his cousin, Chistina Mauser, who was on the helicopter.  So sad.

 
  • Sad
Reactions: Ned
But is it an affront to bring up the bad things someone did, so soon after they die, when their loved ones and their admirers are still grieving? How bad do those bad things have to be to merit immediate mention? How good do the good things have to be to justify silencing the rest? (Do we imagine, for example, that when Harvey Weinstein dies, his talents and wonderful movies will merit courteous silence on his alleged sexual abuses?)

How do you balance the pain that raising sexual assault allegations will cause family and fans against the pain felt by so many survivors of sexual violence who are again watching a beloved man being internationally lauded, the inconvenient parts of his story — the woman who says he raped her — politely excised?

These are not easy questions. There is no scale to weigh them on.

Kobe’s extraordinary ability is key to his story. And it is not the whole story. Out of some mislaid definition of respect, we are so excellent at sidelining the inconvenient parts — at least when the inconvenient parts are women, and the one who is inconvenienced is a man we would prefer to keep admiring without complication.

The inconvenient part of Kobe’s story was a teenager, 19 years old. She worked at a hotel where Kobe stayed. The details are all out there if you want to know them.

Kobe initially told the police nothing happened. Then when the police told him they had blood and semen evidence, he said, well, ok, something didhappen, but it was consensual.

The woman had a bruise on her neck. She had genital injuries and vaginal tears consistent with trauma. Her underwear and a T-shirt of Kobe’s were stained with her blood.

The full weight of Kobe Bryant’s money, power, and influence came down on her. His lawyers suggested she was sexually promiscuous. One psychology professor studied the coverage of the case and found that more than 40% of news stories questioned the truthfulness of the woman’s account; only 7.7% questioned Kobe’s honesty.

The young woman — the teenager — settled out of court. As part of the agreement, Kobe apologized.

We like to think of celebrity-watching as an escape from real life, but it’s more of a mirror. The way we bestow celebrity status reflects what we value; so too does where and how and why we deem celebrities good or bad or admirable or deplorable. The Kobe Bryant rape case reflected something very ugly back at us, and the fact that we just don’t know what to do with that information upon his death shows that, yes, we have changed — at least editors and anchors and reporters and commentators are wringing their hands about how to deal with it.

But we are still very much in flux. We still don’t know how to tell human stories when a life ends, only heroes’ journeys or villains’ defeats. A lot of people want Kobe to be an uncomplicated luminary, a great man without inconvenient addendums, and yet here is the inconvenient shadow of a female form darkening the background.
 
I had no idea the Lakers were that bad at the end of Kobe’s career. 
Kobe's contract was a big reason for that.  He was taking up almost 50% of the 2014 salary cap.  Max contracts under the current CBA can't go above 35% of the total team cap.

ETA:  I'm not criticizing him.  It was a business decision for the club and he was a big reason for fans coming to see the Lakers play.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Pretty good analogy.

Thurman Munson for me is the closest

ETA I was a yankee fan and a young kid, not saying he had nearly the worldwide appeal as Kobe 
Payne Stewart is another.  That one was odd in that he was flying in the air for a few hours already dead until the plane ran out of fuel and crashed.  He had just won the US Open too. 

 
Hope that’s not true.
It's totally true from all reports. 

I agree with your bad feelings for TMZ, they've done a lot of awful things over the years, they're total paparazzi scumbags that pose as journalists. 

Someone had to break the story and they are way too eager to accept being the scumbags they are and offending a lot of folks. 

There has to be a TMZ though, peoples' lust to know everything about celebrities and social media kings/queens is partly why the Kardashians are billionaires. There's a void out there that is instantly filled with their shows and or existence so blame the people who fill the pockets of these companies because in the end it's really all about money. That's why TMZ does what it does, because they can and it makes them a lot of money in the process. 

 
Still not sure how to feel about the rape thing.  I suppose we look past it as a one time deal?   I have to think lebron does this in the middle of metoo he goes away for 10 years.  

 
Still not sure how to feel about the rape thing.  I suppose we look past it as a one time deal?   I have to think lebron does this in the middle of metoo he goes away for 10 years.  
If his wife did, why not us. Look at how he was with his family and all his non basketball contributions in his short life. He was given a second chance and ran with it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top