Kawhi Leonard patterned so much of his game and life after Kobe Bryant, right down to his use of a helicopter — and the same pilot — to get around Southern California.
Leonard, the San Diego-area product who signed with the Clippers last summer after winning an NBA title in Toronto, told reporters Wednesday that he is unsure if he will continue using that mode of transportation after Bryant’s death, along with 13-year-old daughter Gianna, pilot Ara Zobayan and six others in a helicopter crash Sunday in Calabasas, Calif.
“I talked to him about it before our transition to playing in LA. Just seeing how [Kobe] got back and forth from Newport [Beach], and he said he was doing it for about 17 years or so,” Leonard said, according to ESPN. “I feel like that … I mean … the things that you hear, you don’t know what’s real yet. I can’t really speak on it. I don’t know. I don’t know yet. It’s a lot of thoughts in my head.”
Leonard maintains a residence close to Staples Center, but he also travels back and forth to his home in San Diego when possible. He said Zobayan often would fly him and Bryant on the same day.
“Great guy. Super nice. He was one of the best pilots,” Leonard said of Zobayan. “That is a guy who you ask for to fly you from city to city. It’s just surreal still.
“He will drop me off and say he is about [to] go pick up Kobe, [and] Kobe said ‘hello.’ Or he’ll just be like, ‘I just dropped Kobe off, and he said hello.’ Vice versa. So it’s a crazy interaction. He’s a good dude, and I’m sorry for everybody.”
Leonard added that he worked out with Bryant during the summer of 2018, and used his mentor as motivation during the Raptors’ run to the 2019 championship. He even spoke to Bryant on the phone during the locker-room celebration after they finished off the Warriors in the NBA Finals.
“It’s sad every day,” Leonard said. “You know, you kind of feel like life isn’t real once you start seeing these little monuments or the pictures that people are putting up with his face and the year he was born and the year he died. It’s not all come together yet.
“Just the competitive drive, just wanting to do everything you can — on and off the court — to be a better player. I mean, it’s so much. It’s just hard to think of the conversation we had together right now, just summing up in a sentence. Just everything he did. It’s just that motivation. I thought about him every game. He [was] a sense of a drive for me last year, trying to get that championship.”
The Clippers were scheduled to face the Lakers on Tuesday at Staples Center, but they agreed with the NBA’s decision to postpone the game. Clippers forward Paul George, another Southern California product, also grew up idolizing Bryant.
“We from here. It’s different when you talk about what guys thought of him from another state,” George said. “We grew up here. We saw him every day on TV. He’s the reason all of us played the game, so it’s different. It hits different for us, from Russ [Westbrook], DeMar [DeRozan], myself, Kawhi, just all the SoCal guys, it just hits different. He was our MJ [Michael Jordan]. He was our hero. He was our GOAT. It’s just going to hit different for us.
“From idolizing him as a kid to developing a friendship, a brotherhood, to now having conversations with him this summer at his Mamba Academy and talking about fatherhood. [It’s] just some s–t you can’t get over.”