I vividly remember the night Kobe tore his Achilles tendon.

April 12, 2013. I was still an undergraduate junior at Howard University, kicking it with some of my Detroit friends on a fairly mundane Friday evening, laughing and joking about nothing in particular. Kobe, to his credit, was singlehandedly trying to carry an underachieving Lakers team into the playoffs, accruing minutes totals that even at the time appeared ludicrous for a 34-year-old in his seventeenth NBA season. About a week before, then-Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak suggested to Kobe that he lighten his workload a bit, but of course Kobe scoffed at Kupchak’s appeal.

And then, the tear.

My friends and I weren’t watching the game in real time, but time damn near stopped the moment the injury came to our attention. En masse, Twitter mourned the certain end of Kobe Bryant’s preeminence, if not his career altogether. I felt a very distinct sadness myself, the loudest and proudest Kobe hater among my friend group, despondent that I’d spent his entire career downplaying his dominance only for it to end with the suddenness of a finger’s snap. But even worse, it was the snap of his Achilles. Players don’t return from that specific injury the same, ever. And legends aren’t immune. Dominique Wilkins. DeMarcus Cousins. My own uncle Chauncey.

I don’t know if I was numb, but my melancholy was definitely intense, my mind racing through all his greatest hits that I’d either watched live or seen in-person. I guess from my perspective, Kobe deserved a farewell that was both commensurate with his the grandeur of his career and that came on his own terms, and as much as he tried to control the narrative that evening — like a maniac, he made his two free throws with that torn Achilles before exiting the game — it still felt very much like an abrupt finale to one of the most decorated careers in NBA history. Besides, rooting against a diminished Kobe just didn’t have the same sort of appeal, you know?

Mostly because you (read: I) knew what Kobe Bean Bryant was capable of stringing together on that court at full strength, which made actually defeating him that much sweeter. I spent the final three games of the 2004 NBA Finals dreading the moment he’d catch a rhythm and eventually vanquish my resilient-yet-overmatched Detroit Pistons. And, frankly, I never felt confident that it wouldn’t happen until the game clock finally hit all zeroes in Game 5. I mean, you all saw how Game 2 ended. I wanted that sweep badly, and he alone took that from me. Given another couple games, he might’ve snatched that championship from my city, too.

Kobe Bryant craved greatness more than most. Sometimes to his detriment. But I’d want him by my side in a foxhole, no questions asked. At least I’d know for certain he gave it his all.

I remember almost too much. Insignificant moments. Moments I’d rather forget. But I cannot, for the life of me, remember when I decided I could not be a Kobe fan.

I almost chose to sit this eulogy out. I mean, transparently, making fun of Kobe’s eccentricities has been a favorite pastime of mine for two decades. His scuffle with Chris Childs remains quality content, to this day. He semi-pursued a music career, and enlisted Tyra Banks for his only single. I used to make fun of his mini-fro just because I thought it looked dumb. (In hindsight, he started the era of the thot fro twenty years ago. A man truly ahead of his time.) He was my undisputed sports villain, occupying that throne all by himself for an unprecedented period of time. For all those reasons, I’ve felt a level of peculiarity about how emotional I’ve been since learning of his passing, trying to reconcile whether I have any right to care this much, all things considered.

But what’s that old Elie Wiesel quote? The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference. And I was never indifferent about Kobe Bryant.

If you hate-watch a guy for 17 years, you’re bound to become intimately familiar with his personality, on and off the hardwood. All athleticism (and a lot of hubris) when he came into the league in 1996, Kobe’s first moments as a professional revolved around him engineering his way from Charlotte to Los Angeles, probably the earliest indication that he’d be accomplishing his goals on his own terms. In so many ways, Kobe was the quintessential wrestling heel: he didn’t require your love, and he often openly courted your scorn. Everybody feel a way about K, but at least y’all feel something. Up against his hometown Philadelphia 76ers in the 2001 NBA Finals, Kobe calmly told a Sixers fan that his Lakers were going to cut the Sixers’ hearts out in their upcoming game. Nearly a decade later, Philadelphia still resented him for it. Kobe refused to apologize. No point in being the bigger person if that’ll require insincerity.

And on the court, his insatiable pursuit of Michael Jordan’s distinction certainly felt like a fool’s errand, considering I never considered him the best player on his own team. Funny enough, I think Shaquille O’Neal’s daily presence motivated Kobe in a much more tangible way than the ghost of Jordan ever could, as Kobe plainly (and publicly) would question Shaq’s commitment to winning just as Shaq would interrogate Kobe’s commitment to the team construct. Neither of them were exactly wrong: Kobe’s first flameout in the ‘97 NBA Playoffs is still fairly incredible to rewatch; and Shaq definitely spent the first bit of the 2002-03 season recovering from a toe injury that he could’ve handled over that summer, reasoning that since he got hurt on company time, he’d also recover on company time. (An absolutely brilliant witticism from that dude, I must say.)

If Kobe wanted to be considered as historically great as Mike, he’d first need to surpass Shaq, at least in the public’s perspective. And if Shaq could get by on sheer physicality, then Kobe would simply become the most diligent and consistent athlete on that roster — if not the entire Association. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard, or something like that. By the end of the 2002 NBA Finals, the culmination of the Lakers winning three consecutive league titles, that franchise employed two of the three best basketball players in the world. I couldn’t picture that duo losing ever again, at least not until they both were old and decrepit. I couldn’t stand the thought.

Kobe spending much of the rest of that decade in the basketball wilderness — posting absurd counting statistics while surrounded by Lamar Odom (essentially the only positive asset from the Lakers’ trade of Shaq to Miami) and not much else — felt like an appropriate comeuppance, at least for me. Bean could get all the glory he sought as a one-man touring group, and I wouldn’t have to see his ass in May and June. A win-win for all parties. Sort of.

Yet, even hate-watching the guy came with a measure of satisfaction. As a kid in Detroit, I only caught Lakers games in full as part of the NBA’s national television schedule. But after my granny would fall asleep, I’d switch the television over to ESPNEWS and watch their live coverage of the night’s late-breaking sports stories. This might be obvious, but during that timeframe, Kobe’s exploits were frequently featured. To name a few: outscoring the entire Dallas Mavericks roster 62-61 through three quarters in December 2005; the Jalen Rose game (81 points total, 55 in the second half alone) just a month later; 43.4 points per, spread over 13 games in January 2006; 35.4 points per game for the entire 2005-06 NBA season. A few of his performances became so staggering in the moment that they would just cut to the game and let it run to its conclusion, the rest of the sporting world’s headlines be damned.

Kobe won just a solitary NBA Most Valuable Player award, in 2008, which at the time definitely seemed like more of a Lifetime Achievement Award considering his semi-stronger candidacies in the preceding years. I admit that I found the media’s aversion to awarding Kobe anything wholly justified: I would’ve kept that Shaq arrangement afloat (I think), and I agreed with the general basketball intelligentsia who loathed awarding the MVP to players on average-to-mediocre ballclubs. However … just look at this roster. Go on, click the link. Kobe won forty-five games against professional competition with Phil Jackson starting Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown and Smush Parker, at the same time. I think we might’ve overthought that one, just a tad.

Kobe’s ascension to cult hero among a certain generation of basketball fans just so happened to synchronize with the mainstream media’s refusal to acknowledge him as the best basketball player on the planet. I highly doubt that one’s a coincidence. Regularly impugned as selfish and aloof, Kobe represented what it meant to work twice as hard for only a modicum of the credit you deserve. (I write this with first-hand experience, as someone who’d intentionally overlook the brilliance he brought to the table each night.) By the time Kobe had been awarded that 2008 MVP, he’d long ago cemented his status as an all-timer. And among the household names populating the “Redeem Team” representing USA Basketball in that summer Olympic Games — faces we expected to soon usurp Kobe’s dominion over the league — the Mamba was their steadiest hand throughout the tournament, and their most reliable option in what became an extremely competitive Gold Medal game versus Spain.

Those Olympics triggered the level of talent we see in the NBA today, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul observing Kobe’s dedication to his craft and recognizing that dedication was the key to his sustained excellence. Almost by osmosis, Kobe managed to boost the level of talent surrounding him. The man won 45 games against NBA-level competition with Smush Parker as his starting point guard! And either you got your shit together, or he’d chew you up and spit you out. Word to Swaggy P and Jeremy Lin.

Almost hilariously, the final game of Kobe Bean Bryant’s professional basketball career aired concurrently with my favorite team’s final opportunity to secure the NBA record for the most wins in a single season.

I wanted to be indifferent about Kobe that night. Really, I tried. His last season had been strikingly uneven, an extended but deserved retirement tour that effectively celebrated Kobe’s legacy but did little to burnish it. I couldn’t bear to watch one of the illest competitors I’d ever seen go out with a whimper. So, maybe if I just ignored the game, I could pretend like it never happened. In case of emergency.

No chance. After flipping between the two games for maybe a quarter-and-a-half, it became too obvious that something special — and religious — was happening at Staples Center. What began as a simple basketball game before long transformed into a Pentecostal tent revival. And there I was in my living room, catching the Holy Ghost right alongside everybody else. By the final quarter, you would’ve thought Kobe raised Lazarus from the dead given some of these reactions. It was pandemonium.

Sixty points. On fifty shots. And I easily wanted him to take every single one. On that Wednesday night, even I couldn’t front on Kobe. Almost three years ago to the hour, I watched Kobe respond incredulously to a reporter who sheepishly asked if his Achilles injury had him considering retirement. Silly me for thinking he’d fail to show out for one of the biggest nights of his life.

Kobe Bryant craved greatness more than most. Sometimes to his detriment. But I’d want him by my side in a foxhole, no questions asked. At least I’d know for certain he gave it his all.

Rest in power, Bean. I love the game of basketball so much more because of you. And I’ll never love to hate another athlete as much, so long as I’m on this earth. You have my word.