Editor's Note: (The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.)
(CNN) Everyone from Lower Merion has a story about Kobe Bryant. I have mine.
In a pickup game after school, I blocked him twice in a row, got the ball and pushed it up court. Roughly two minutes later, I found myself as the lone defender back with Kobe charging toward the basket. There would be no repeat of that earlier possession. I got the classic Kobe staredown after he dunked, quite literally, over me. As someone who wasn't on the team and only stepped on the court with him a few times, I cherish that even more than the blocks.
I won't overstate my relationship with Kobe. We were friendly, but not quite friends. I choose to believe he'd remember me if we ever crossed paths again. I'll never know.
Kobe, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, died tragically in a helicopter crash Sunday in Southern California. The 41-year-old basketball legend has been mourned by athletes, entertainers and politicians all over the world, everyone who felt some relationship with him either in person or as a fan.
Since Kobe went directly from our high school outside Philadelphia to the NBA, Lower Merion was his only real alma mater. And I think all of us who went to school with him — I was class of '95, he was '96 — felt at least a small connection to his legacy, both the good and the bad.
Kobe was the ultimate Big Man on Campus, but still entirely approachable. He sat sprawled on the hallway floors between classes with the rest of us. We all knew he was destined for something else. He was voted Most Likely to Succeed, after all.
While he was playing in the NBA, going to school with Kobe came up frequently. Even as people largely celebrate him now after his passing, he's always been polarizing. People loved debating Kobe and my proximity to him made people assume I'd be his defender.
As a teenager navigating a league of grown men, he was criticized for not socializing enough. He was a loner, petulant and hardheaded. He was a gunner. You either respected his confidence or cast him as someone who didn't Play the Game the Right Way. There wasn't much in between.
Then came the sexual assault accusation in 2003. It was difficult to watch that unfold, both because it was hard for me to imagine the guy I knew doing what was alleged and because there was a very real person behind the accusations. I couldn't defend him then and I won't do so now. The criminal charges were dropped, after which Kobe issued an apology, but maintained that he believed the encounter was consensual. The accuser settled her civil suit with him in 2005. I never forgot those charges even as I rooted for him later and mourn him now. For those who say it was erased, that wasn't my experience when people wanted to know what I knew about him, especially as a young man. It is part of his legacy.
When I knew Kobe, we were all invincible. As time went on, it was clear we weren't. Kobe is the fourth man I know of in the Lower Merion class of '96 who is dead. The other three were my friends, one of them my best. Kobe's death is much more removed from me, but they're all bound together now as I think about the people I knew who have gone suddenly and far too soon. My daily reminders of the fragility of life.
I'm sure this odd sense of connection happens with many people who knew someone famous at a young age. You can see it in the emotional scene outside my high school this week, and you can see it in the grieving in Italy, where Kobe spent much of his childhood.
We got to watch the arc of his life and career from afar but somehow it feels close. Kobe's obsessive dedication to his craft, even at a young age, set him apart from us. It was a solitary drive. You either advanced it or you needed to get out of the way, like maybe I should have that day on the court all those years ago but am glad I didn't.
But it's what happened after basketball — where he was first and foremost a family man, dedicated to others more than himself — that made him human. And I'm most sad that's where the arc ends.