Gold in the Furnace of Kobe

In January 2023, Vanessa Bryant stood at the podium in Springfield, Massachusetts, inducting her late husband Kobe into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Three years earlier, the helicopter crash that killed Kobe and their thirteen-year-old daughter Gianna had looked, to the watching world, like utter destruction. Millions grieved what seemed a senseless, catastrophic loss. But Vanessa did not speak like a woman destroyed.…