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| Kobe Bryant in 2015 Photo by Keith Allison of Hanover, MD, US |
All they had to do was land.
There were plenty of airports all around. The police helicopters in northern Los Angeles County were all grounded on that Sunday morning because of the thick fog. In a helicopter, the smallest mistake can mean death.
All they had to do was land at Van Nuys Airport, for example, and take a taxi from there to Thousand Oaks. Or a Lyft or Uber.
Why did the pilot fly on, just beneath the dense fog, without much clearance between his copter and the ground? Why didn't one of the control towers advise them to land?
Why didn't Kobe Bryant pause and think: "What's the highest priority? Saving time? Or admitting defeat caused by low visibility?"
Kobe is famous for his ability to focus. He could cut other things out of his mind and play intensely. In practice and in games that count, he focused on honing his skills and making the right moves to win the game.
But sometimes it's important to do a course correction. To pause. It can be valuable not to downplay the pain but to listen to it. Pain is a message. Sometimes survival requires pressing on through pain, but sometimes survival requires pausing and reassessing.
How important is it to get to the Mamba Sports Academy? Is the game always the most important thing?
Announcers were telling stories from Kobe's life yesterday, including one about Kobe seeing a pack of wild dogs while he was on safari. Though humans in a vehicle were nearby, they continued to focus intently on the prey they had just killed.
Kobe was impressed by their focus, said the person remembering him, just as he admired the focus of sports players who had that ability to filter out everything else.
But in the decisions that caused that helicopter crash, intense focus on the goal may have been a liability.
The situation required a pause and a change of plans.
Notes:
The crash happened on a hillside southeast of Las Virgines Rd., near a Presbyterian church called Church of the Canyon (about 16 miles NW of where I live in Santa Monica). Apparently the helicopter was trying to follow the 101 freeway to Thousand Oaks in dense, low fog. But that area is 700+ ft. higher in altitude than LA or Santa Monica or beach towns. There was not much room to fly beneath the low-lying fog. For some reason the helicopter veered from following the 101 and followed Las Virgines, where it hit a hill. The Las Virgines to Malibu Canyon Road is a 4-lane through-road from the coast to the valley with lots of traffic. I wonder if the pilot mistook it for the 101.
There were plenty of airports all around. The police helicopters in northern Los Angeles County were all grounded on that Sunday morning because of the thick fog. In a helicopter, the smallest mistake can mean death.
All they had to do was land at Van Nuys Airport, for example, and take a taxi from there to Thousand Oaks. Or a Lyft or Uber.
Why did the pilot fly on, just beneath the dense fog, without much clearance between his copter and the ground? Why didn't one of the control towers advise them to land?
Why didn't Kobe Bryant pause and think: "What's the highest priority? Saving time? Or admitting defeat caused by low visibility?"
Kobe is famous for his ability to focus. He could cut other things out of his mind and play intensely. In practice and in games that count, he focused on honing his skills and making the right moves to win the game.
But sometimes it's important to do a course correction. To pause. It can be valuable not to downplay the pain but to listen to it. Pain is a message. Sometimes survival requires pressing on through pain, but sometimes survival requires pausing and reassessing.
How important is it to get to the Mamba Sports Academy? Is the game always the most important thing?
Announcers were telling stories from Kobe's life yesterday, including one about Kobe seeing a pack of wild dogs while he was on safari. Though humans in a vehicle were nearby, they continued to focus intently on the prey they had just killed.
Kobe was impressed by their focus, said the person remembering him, just as he admired the focus of sports players who had that ability to filter out everything else.
But in the decisions that caused that helicopter crash, intense focus on the goal may have been a liability.
The situation required a pause and a change of plans.
Notes:
The crash happened on a hillside southeast of Las Virgines Rd., near a Presbyterian church called Church of the Canyon (about 16 miles NW of where I live in Santa Monica). Apparently the helicopter was trying to follow the 101 freeway to Thousand Oaks in dense, low fog. But that area is 700+ ft. higher in altitude than LA or Santa Monica or beach towns. There was not much room to fly beneath the low-lying fog. For some reason the helicopter veered from following the 101 and followed Las Virgines, where it hit a hill. The Las Virgines to Malibu Canyon Road is a 4-lane through-road from the coast to the valley with lots of traffic. I wonder if the pilot mistook it for the 101.
My brother Bill describes flying on a helicopter with low visibility in a snowstorm in Germany, following the autobahn because it was one of the few landmarks they could see.
A map of the area where the crash occurred:
News article with a map:
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