Two-time Champ Gabriel Medina and Zeke Lau lead surfer tributes to NBA God Kobe Bryant (1978-2020)

"You have inspired me to be the best athlete I can be."

In the gloomy mountains above Calabasas in LA’s San Fernando Valley this morning, NBA god Kobe Bryant, his kid and three others were killed when his $13-million helicopter crashed around ten am.

Kobe was one of the greatest NBA players of all time, eighteen-times All Star, five championships, although his career stalled, ever so briefly, in 2003, when he was accused of rape, a case settled out of court etc.

Surfers including Gabriel Medina, Zeke Lau, Jadson Andre as well as the WSL have posted tributes to Bryant.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B7y68PFJcdO/

Superstar athletes killed in their own birds ain’t nothing new.

Rally car champ Col McRae and his kids died when his chopper went down in 2007; Daytona 500 champ  Davey Allison died when his three-week-old bird ate it while parking in 1993.

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23 Comments
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Wayne Lunch

Pretty sure there were 7 others lost their lives on that flight ?….Oh they weren’t loaded and famous, they don’t count

Stu Azole

Kobe’s the reason I stopped being a Laker fan. Watching him and big-baby Shaq whine and cry about each other while they were each carrying $100MM contracts was more than I could take. He’d have made a great pro surfer.

Justin Housman

Cool story bro.

Krypto Jackson

I feel a strong connection to him – I’ve watched him his entire career – he crashed a few exits from my parents house – he was in the bird w/ his daughter and I have a daughter. I have never felt more sad at the passing of a celebrity. IT IS DEVASTATING. My grief takes nothing away from the sadness I feel for other tragedies.

original haole

zeke lau is an asshole

Chad Jones

jordy too, cry is free craio

Mista Spakle

Don’t like Chappelle? Lighten up

SSD

So people should just not care and or write shit about him? If you don’t give a shit about him, why bother posting this?

Chief Hot stuff

Kobe beef.

Numbnuts

“Haters are a good problem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.“ KOBE

Jordy's pout

Don’t forget about Hansie “The Devil Made Me Do It” Cronje

timsluis

I always thought that was faked. He was seen playing tennis all over the world after his ‘death’

Jordy's pout

It could have all been a ploy from Ray McCauley to get some attention back onto his church. I think Hansie’s pre-devil endorsements brought a good few mil into the Rhema coffers

timsluis

https://www.pressreader.com…

Never forget the time Paster Ray was bust stealing sand from from the Oppenheimer’s. The irony of preacher who built his beach house on the sand and it started washing away.

Superworm

👌. That’s the world’s smallest violin playing for you cobba

Low wide stinkbug stance

I fly to the rig on an S76. I don’t like reading about helicopter crashes.
Shirl the Curl died in a chopper crash. I spoke to some pilots who knew him and said it was pilot error and he was basically stuffing around trying to fly upside down too close to the ground.

Chief Hot stuff

Pack a chute?

Low wide stinkbug stance

In theory choppers can autorotate if the engine stops. The updraft rushing through the blades turns them, so the chopper won’t sink like a stone. Some test pilots with balls of steel have actually tested this. You’ll still land hard but not be squished into a tangled mess.

Either there’s been some sort of fuck up and the pilot’s hit a power line or the old catastrophic metal fatigue. If it was contaminated fuel they’d know about it by now.

SSD

It was super foggy that night and crashed into a hillside. No power lines but people reported the engine not sounding normal.

Hippy

Sage Hippy Advice:

Avoid Los Angeles at all costs on the day of his funeral, tentatively next Friday. I barely escaped Michael Jackson’s funeral, literally by seconds, and the freeways downtown will close very early that morning.

Now, avoiding LA at all costs is great advice every other day of the week too, but critical on this day.

Chief Hot stuff

Probly a $50 bolt

Blunted Sultan

No shit, its always something trivial like a bolt put on backwards by some sleepy dude on the assembly line. Ridiculous. Private aircraft safety regulations have a lower threshold vs commercial. Thats why you see so many more private plane crashes vs commercial.

Mista Spakle

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