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Dawson: Bryant news devastating

Sunday morning, Kobe Bryant awoke to his last day on Earth.

A few hours later, the Earth shook — reverberated actually — at the news that Bryant had died in a helicopter crash along with his daughter Gianna and seven others.

Bryant, who played 20 seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers, was a legend of not just the National Basketball Association, but of the entire sports world, of the pop culture world. The entertainment world too after winning an Oscar for ‘Dear Basketball’, a short film based on a poem he wrote when retiring from the game.

The outpouring of shock and condolences came from all over. Presidents Trump and Obama, Kareem, Magic, Bill Russell, Michael Jordan, Derek Jeter, Tom Brady, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Jerry West. And it didn’t stop.

Bryant’s death had personal resonance for Clovis, which has a favorite son in the NBA family. 2013 Clovis High graduate John Dawson is a guard for the Greensboro Swarm, G League affiliate of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. Reached by telephone early Monday evening, Dawson was among the millions shocked by Sunday’s news.

“Oh man, it’s sad to hear,” Dawson said. “He was the great of my generation, so to see a man of his stature go down in such a manner, it kind of froze me. I didn’t know what to do with the rest of my day.”

There was a lot of that going around.

Even the most casual basketball fans knew Bryant, likely had some enduring memories of the shots he made, the games he took over, the five championship trophies he hoisted.

For Dawson, who grew up playing basketball and now does so in the NBA’s own network, there was plenty to glean from Bryant’s career.

“Kobe was a big part of the game,” Dawson said, “so you can’t say you play this game and not have anything from Kobe. Much like Michael Jordan, much like LeBron, you have something in your game that mimics them. How (Kobe) handled his body, his mind, his family, I can only hope to get that far in my profession and my craft.”

Though Bryant is gone at 41, he will continue to have an imprint on basketball and on the people who followed his career, Dawson among them.

“He’s inspired me on and off the court to be the best player I can be,” Dawson said. “I know he had a lot more knowledge to pass on that I wanted to get from him. It was hard, it was hard.”