Now don’t get all freaked out on me here, I’m not saying I actually believe any of these so-called conspiracy theories surrounding Kobe Bryant’s recently untimely death, but I will say that some of them have certainly piqued my curiosity. Several times I had to look at a theory and seriously ask myself, “Is there a conspiracy here?” So today I thought I’d comb through some of the more interesting conspiracy theories I’ve found and share with you my favorites and give you my ratings on which theories actually have teeth and which likely don’t. As a quick refresher, Kobe Bryant was killed in a plane crash on January 26, 2020 at the young age of 41 along with his daughter and seven other people.
Kobe’s Death was Predicted/Planned Years Ago in a Nike Shoe Ad
The Vigilant Citizen blog (which I often find an interesting read) actually piqued my curiosity first with this interesting “coincidence”. I put coincidence in quotes because the author of this article suggests that it is seemingly more than an interesting coincidence and more likely to be what Carl Jung referred to as a synchronicity (or meaningful coincidence from which there appears to be no causal relationship). That’s just a fancy way of saying this coincidence is just too weird to be “just a coincidence”.
His first observation is that in 2011 Nike aired a shoe commercial featuring Kobe Bryant as a fictional alter ego named the “Black Mamba”. In it Kobe causes a helicopter to crash and burn on a basketball court by tossing a bomb shaped like a basketball at it.
Is there a conspiracy here? (likelihood) : 3
Kind of speaks for itself. It’s a weird coincidence which really could be just a coincidence but does leave a little room to scratch the head and think about it for a minute.
Kobe’s Death was Predicted/Planned Years Ago in an Cartoon
If the Nike ad wasn’t very convincing, try this one on for size. This also comes from the same article by Vigilant Citizen. According to the author, just a few years ago in 2017, Kobe Bryant was depicted in the adult oriented cartoon, Chamberlain Heights . In the episode linked here, Kobe apparently is killed in a helicopter crash.
Is there a conspiracy here? (likelihood): 4
For me, this one is getting a little weird, especially when combined with the previous helicopter crash commercial and some additional information pointed out by the Vigilant Citizen next…
Kobe Bryant’s Death Timed to Coincide with the Grammy’s
Kudos to Vigilant Citizen for sussing this one out too. There’s a lot of interesting coincidences here but basically the main theme begins with the death of Whitney Houston on February 11, 2012 at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. Apparently a few floors below her over 800 guests were attending a pre-Grammy’s award party with the Grammy Awards show set for the following day. That years Grammy’s was then largely overshadowed by numerous tributes to the recently departed Whitney Houston as famous people mourned her on the big stage with tribute after tribute. It was also pointed out that this particular Grammy awards had a very strange occult looking ritual taking place on stage such as seen in the image here.
Similarly, this year Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crashed just a few hours before the 2020 Grammy Awards and only about 30 miles from the Staples Center arena where the Grammy’s were being held. This is the same arena where Kobe played hundreds of times with the LA Lakers. And, as in the case of Whitney Houston, the Grammy’s were largely overshadowed with famous people mourning the unfortunate passing of Kobe Bryant.
Is there a conspiracy here? (likelihood): 3
Google Lists Kobe Bryant’s Death as an Assasination
Most people trust a major US newspaper like the USA Today to be a little more reputable than say Bob’s Conspiracy News channel, so when I saw this conspiracy confirmed by this USA Today article it gave the theory a little more weight. According to sources including USA Today, in the early hours after his death, when people searched for the date of Kobe Bryant’s death, Google returned the answer of “January 26, 2020 – Date of Assassination”
Is there a conspiracy here? (likelihood): 4
Well, SOMEONE had to have added that tagline. Makes you wonder why? This one at least has a real element of conspiracy because someone did conspire to have the search return “date of assassination”. That doesn’t mean he was assassinated of course, but someone had to have done this so it gets my highest rating.
Numberology
Many of the early news stories reporting the death of Kobe Bryant seemed oddly obsessed with pointing out that on board was his 13 year old daughter. Frequently articles would describe the crash like this:
“The basketball star Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people were killed on Sunday morning….”
Lead sentence in article published by the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/us/kobe-death.html
Those who are into studying occult groups will point out that numerology is often very important. Articles reporting the event will often have secret numbers that those in the know would recognize. The number 13 has long been associated in the occult as being something hidden and thus articles always stressing the number 13 COULD be seen as a signal that there was a hidden element to the death that only those in the know would recognize. Or…it could just be that his daughter was 13 and reporters felt like mentioning that.
a conspiracy here? (likelihood): 2
So that’s it for now. I had high hopes when I started this article that some juicier conspiracies would surface. After all, just a simple search of “Kobe Bryant death conspiracy” turns up dozens of sites including some claiming Kobe Bryant tweeted on twitter the day before his death that he had dirt on Hillary Clinton that would put her in jail. Unfortunately this last one appears not to have much weight at all to it so I’m not going to give it a rating.
So I leave you with this thought, take this for what it is, an interesting thing to consider (just for a moment). IF later on more evidence comes out suggesting a conspiracy then this article will probably be resurrected and added to the new information. In the meantime, please don’t have me committed. It was just a fun little piece of entertainment.