Kobe Bryant let Doc Rivers in. One year after his death, the absence still stings. | David Murphy

They were at a function together, as they often were, a longtime coach and an all-time great, chairs pulled together in a corner of the room. The subject was one that always came up whenever Doc Rivers and Kobe Bryant were in the vicinity of one another. In 2008, Rivers’ Celtics had beaten Bryant’s Lakers in Game 6 of the NBA Finals to clinch Boston’s first title in 22 years. Two years later, Bryant had returned the favor, leading the Lakers to an 83-79 win in Game 7 to secure the fifth and final championship of his Hall of Fame career.

Nearly a decade had passed, both of their next acts well underway. Rivers was in his seventh season as head coach of the Clippers, Bryant in the fourth year of his retirement. But as they sat and reminisced, it became clear to at least one of them that some things don’t change.

There was a certain look that would appear on Bryant’s face when he was fully invested in an objective. It was less an expression than it was another state of being. Rivers had seen it on that early summer night in 2008, when he looked into the eyes of his vanquished opponent and realized that he’d better enjoy this celebration. He’d seen it two years later, when the Celtics kept on trapping Bryant and Bryant just kept on shooting, salvaging a 6-for-24 performance with 10 fourth-quarter points, including a pair of free throws that all but clinched the title with 25.7 seconds remaining. And Rivers was seeing it now, sitting in the corner of that room, listening with amusement as the legend peppered him with questions about his coaching.

“He was so into coaching after retirement because of his daughter,” Rivers recalled on Monday. “He just wanted to know everything.”

Three weeks later, Bryant was gone. His daughter was gone. The seven others who’d joined them on that helicopter trip — all of them gone. Payton Chester, Sarah Chester, Alyssa Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, John Altobelli, Christina Mauser, Ara Zobayan — all gone. Maybe there’s a way to phrase it less bluntly. Yet when we talk about death, isn’t the bluntness kind of the thing?

The sudden onset of absence in its most permanent form is a feeling for which there is no remedy. Further compounding the processing of such emotions is the inseparable tangle of selfishness and empathy. The world lost a performer, an artist, an entrepreneur, one of the founding fathers of the modern-day NBA. While all of these are valuable roles, it is their value to us that we mourn, the loss of a vessel for our memories.

Such a loss may be a tragedy, but it is our tragedy, and it pales in comparison to the ones belonging to those who knew him deepest. Bryant was a father, a husband, a son, 78 inches of flesh and blood and contradictions, his life treasured by his loved ones the same as the eight other lives the world lost that day.

» READ MORE: The Lakers beat the Sixers one night before Kobe Bryant died. They return to Philly, still in disbelief, one day after the tragic anniversary.

The closer you get to Bryant’s inner NBA circle, the fiercer the competition between these two forms of grief. Rivers knew both sides of the man. At first, he was like much of the rest of the NBA, watching Bryant’s maturation from a gangly teen idol to one of the greatest competitors the league had ever seen. Once Bryant entered into retirement, Rivers saw the layers start to peel.

“I thought after his retirement, he started letting more people in, and I was one of those,” the Sixers coach said.

As much as he remembers the player, the competitor, the foe, Rivers remembers conversations like the one he and Bryant had three weeks before his death as they talked out that 2010 Celtics-Lakers Finals.

“His memory,” Rivers said when asked what he learned about Bryant as he grew closer to him. “A year or two after 2010, we were at a function, and he’d walk up to you and say, ‘I know why you all were doing this.’ And you would laugh about it. There were times when you thought you were the smarter guy. That was his way of letting you know, not really.”

» READ MORE: A year after Kobe Bryant’s death, remember that the Lower Merion kid was ours to cherish | Mike Sielski

It has been a difficult year for the sense-making business. In a lot of ways, the NBA calendar turns over on Tuesday, because Jan. 26 was when the old year began. The public mourning of Bryant’s death had barely ended when the pandemic struck and the league closed up its doors. By the time play resumed, the emotion had moved on to different forms.

In the public consciousness, Bryant’s death can feel like it happened five years ago. But for those who knew him on a personal level, the absence still stings.

“This last week, there’s been so much talk about him, it’s still hard to believe,” Rivers said. “You know it’s real that he’s not here, but it’s still hard to believe that.”