 The sporting world has been dragged into grief ever since the death of Kobe Bryant last Sunday. He along with daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash when they were travelling for a basketball match. Kobe undoubtedly a superstar in basketball has left a legacy on court no doubt but he has also had certain dark faces in his life. We are joined here by basketball journalist Karan Madhok who has followed not just Kobe's NBA in general but he has also followed Kobe's career closely in fact he has seen him in action many times he has also spoken to the man he has interviewed him. Welcome Karan a few words about your interactions with Kobe and also about him on court. Yeah no I remember one of the first things that I remembered of course when I heard the news it was 2.30 in the morning 2.30 in the morning so in India so of course I was sleepy shocked you know but when the shock started to wear off I remembered of course you always try to find a personal connection in situations like this and for me I did meet him once I got to speak to the man one time the Lakers had played the Clippers this was a regular season game I think 6 or 7 years ago 2 LA teams and the Clippers were starting to be good the Kobe had already won 5 championship but now he had already done so much more he climbed the top of the mountain you know the Clippers were starting to be good and the Lakers won the game it was pretty contentious so after the game in the locker room there was a big scrum around him and I got to ask one question and my question was is this a rivalry now between Lakers and the Clippers both teams are almost equally good of course Clippers until then hadn't been a terrible trash team for decades and Kobe just looked at me with this disgusting look like he just scoffed at me the rivalry rivalries are made in the playoffs and that to me was as you know it was just one of the facets of Kobe's personality that he believed in the highest level of competition these things were too small for him you know the regular season wins that that cockiness in this nature is something that I mean split people you could only either love Kobe or you could hate Kobe and I belong to the latter part because he always played the team which I always loved to see lose yeah but yeah otherwise I mean one can't one can't but help admire the player on court the what he was capable of doing he could single-handedly destroy teams the the number the baskets that he has scored the points that he has scored in fact he was recently surpassed by LeBron yeah as the third highest points in NBA Street again Kobe is competitive nature in fact is evident in the way his relationship was with LeBron he couldn't I mean apparently they both couldn't stand each other but that's that's the nature of his his competitiveness and so looking at Kobe's legacy as a player or looking at his career taking taking into account that he had a very early start in the NBA just after school he entered so can you give us some insight into his early early days if you have seen him in action then and about his start of the journey I mean yeah so I didn't actually see him in person in action but and back in those days you know it's funny like they when Kobe joined the NBA was 96 draft class which is considered one of the best rookie classes ever to come in NBA history that was around the same time I became an NBA fan too and so to so this is why to me and a lot of people who have been fans for that long it feel like I almost feel like I've lost a family member with Kobe dying it's it's interesting and I was never a big Kobe fan per se and I have close friends to whom Kobe is almost like a godly figure you know to me he was just ever present I can't think of basketball lifetime without having Kobe you know so it's in that sense he's so important not because of love or hate he was just always there he was always somebody part of the conversation of the greatest he was always either annoying me or I was completely in love with what he was doing you know it's it's what you said he was polarizing and he was competitive and more than LeBron with his own teammate Shaq I mean that was the biggest thing right like he they they all they won three championships they should have one more and it was a big reason why Shaq left the Lakers so and you asked me about the early days yep straight from the early days he came into the NBA he knew what he wanted to be he wanted to be Michael Jordan the blueprint was already set up before Michael Jordan it was very rare for a perimeter guy for a guard to dominate the way Jordan was dominating Jordan was the best player he was a leading scorer and Kobe decided this is the guy I'm going to follow and he followed it to a tee you know he his shot was like Jordan the way he stuck his tongue out was like Jordan he had like all the Jordan personality but he wasn't that good yet so he came off as very cocky when he was young people were like you know like you are not that good you have to respect the authority of seniority you know so those are the early Kobe memories he he he tried to prove too much but in his own mind he was already there he was already thinking I work as hard as anyone else in the world so I deserve the respect anyone else in the world does yeah you brought up Jordan so yeah I mentioned that he always used to play for a team which I loved seeing them lose so I was a very big fan of Jordan and again that generation where you started watching NBA and Jordan was in his in his height of his career height of his powers and so but then later now the feeling is that the fade away jumper Kobe's fade away was much more efficient and much more better than Jordan's say many experts I disagree because I found Jordan's to be more poetic and beautiful but yeah so something on Kobe's presence on court and his skills and how because Kobe's generation again now the basketball that we see in the NBA is again completely different to what these guys were playing so did he play the transitional role when when the like you mentioned Jordan was the first first player to give away that much of an offensive prominence to point guards but now you only see perimeter shooters dominating the game that way with the Golden State and yeah so no it's sorry go yeah yeah so basically his role in the evolution of basketball as a game that's actually like a very very important question I think in terms of not because you know before Jordan basketball was mostly a big guys game and the small players who were and when I mean small these guys are still like six yeah but but small and relative terms yeah like shooting guards and point guards they rarely ever apart from maybe like Dr. J and every once in a while some other guys they rarely ever got to take so many shots or they really ever got a high usage rate and Jordan became this guy who showed everybody that I can do it this way but Jordan played in the era where the three point line existed but it wasn't really utilized it wasn't really exploited and no one thought the mathematics of fit through of the three point shot they didn't realize that taking a three point shot is worth more than stepping one foot in and taking a two point shot a certain number of the mathematics just favored the three Kobe was yes I think he was a better three point shooter than Jordan but that was more because Jordan just never it was never part of Jordan's culture to utilize the three you know I think and I am with you here I think Jordan was the greatest of all time and not just that I think if Jordan was was born 10 15 years later he would he was so competitive he would have made himself the greatest three point shooter ever just because that's how he was wired and Kobe ended up playing that sort of bridge between he could play like Jordan but he could also take a lot of threes and then now we're in an era where the best shooting guard right now is probably James Harden and the guy just thrives on the three point line so Kobe did help bridge that gap a little bit and Kobe start also again so after he established himself and post the Jordan era so to speak and when his career when it was his turn to actually step up and take that throne so to speak that's when a very event through a very critical juncture in his life which is which has tainted his legacy in a way forever so basically in 2003 the rape allegation that came out it's it's it's very tricky when we discuss a legacy of a person who has just died but it's also unfair to not discuss that at this point because this is something that he is admitted to after a year or so of fighting that case and also denying that rape ever happened and then changing his story to saying that it was consensual intercourse that I had and then after that there was a tarnishing game that went on where his lawyers and his PR mechanism or whatever that worked around him went on went on the offensive against the victim and then she pulled off and then they had a I mean she pulled off the criminal charges and then they had a civil case which was settled outside of court and then I mean obviously he got back into his career and all that so well can you just give your view on that entire episode and what do you think how do you think he should have handled it or as a player of his stature and as a player with responsibility because post that he has turned out to be someone who is who is very active in talking about women in sport and their rights and also he was very vocal about how a lot of other issues but then silent about about this face of his of his life yeah you know when this happened so this is 2003 Kobe Biden had already won three championships he was already sort of one of the most popular athletes in not just basketball in sport like one of the highest-selling jerseys he was it you know it's this is still relatively early in his career and yet he had already climbed the top of the mountain he had already become this guy who was considered a winner one of the best players of his generation and just and of course he was also hated but back then he was hated for more forgivable reasons he was here for being cocky or here for being rude you know things like that so when this allegation happened it was and I know people made the comparison oh it was 2003 so it was before the sort of social media outcry of things but even then I remember like it was shocking to us all you know it was just like you see someone who is not necessarily like my personal hero but in the sense like somebody that I look up to admire for their talents to to to be doing this and it has definitely tarnished his legacy I mean the very fact that we this man dies in such a horrific way loses his family member and and we can't talk about him without one of the first things that that comes up is this I think the the fact that this comes up the moment we talk about a young a youngish man in middle age he was 41 dies it shows that it has tarnished his legacy you know um that said he did you know he was able to like somehow resuscitate his career and you know he he was hated everywhere and it's it's actually pretty crazy that how he was able to go from that to then again become beloved a few years later you know to become like in 2006 when he had an 81 point game that's what people were talking about he became known as Kobe 81 then he became known as Kobe winning the the Olympic championship and two more championships and just like you know you mentioned him being very involved in woman empowerment and of course he was very very interested in making sure women's sports rises he had daughters who played sports and honestly like I don't see it's weird I don't see a contradiction in someone who was like accused of committing a sexual crime and then someone because like it's terrible people get to do nice things too you know and nice people can do terrible things too so it's it has tarnished his legacy uh it's not the only the thing I'll remember Kobe by but but we cannot have a conversation about Kobe without talking about that yeah I was discussing this with a with a associate earlier and there was suddenly the thing cropped up about Salman Khan it's a tangent I know but yeah the same thing brand building exercise around Salman though yes yeah we know what all he has done and so uh it's so that that takes us to me too moment and also the post that as a society we do tend to overlook celebrities and our heroes I mean doing really bad things because they could score 81 points in a game or they could act and make blockbusters or things like that so but but again it's not just about Kobe but in general it is I guess very important to speak about it now though it may it may feel like it's a it's a wrong moment because because the man has just died and along with his daughter and seven others it's interesting you brought up like the whole brand thing brand Salman brand Kobe I think the to me personally the the legacy of Kobe is it's I think he became bigger than the person in a way like his brand became bigger than his what he was as a human being and and that was very carefully cultivated Kobe was I've read so many articles since his passing about him being a master storyteller and he wanted after he passed after he retired he actually was going into storytelling writing scripts writing books and stuff and he told the story of his own career or he tried to tell story of his own career the way he thought saw fit you know and of course the allegation had no place in that story in his own telling of his story um I would say that what what Kobe managed was he made his own whether or not you agree with Kobe as the man the the myth of Mamba Mamba mentality I think that has become a philosophy of its own now it's become this philosophy of like trying really hard like he was known as the hardest working player from many people have interviewed of all time like basketball players anywhere I actually feel he over achieved in his career because he shouldn't have been that good but he worked his way to being that good so so so the Kobe mentality the Mamba mentality is now a separate thing and it's a separate philosophy which people will always appreciate and admire and love about him and and you can sort of love that while keeping the player almost separate and this happens with a lot of great artists athletes people in history where you know what they stood for so I hope people don't forget Kobe as a man but I hope they they take that symbol of positivity from from him also because he did mean a lot to a lot of people and um yeah it's it it is tragic for me it's one of the saddest days in in basketball history as as far as I'm concerned it it indeed is sad and and basketball will obviously forever miss him and at this juncture we can always say the may he rest in peace and may the game celebrate him for what he was on court