THE Los Angeles Lakers’ social media offering on Sunday morning (Monday in Manila) was both delightfully sweet and devastatingly sad.
The sweet part of the post on X was a photo of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant with his arm around Gianna, one of his four daughters and a budding basketball player, as they took in a game together. Their broad smiles said all anyone needed to know about their bond with each other and with the game.
Then reality strikes with the caption: “Always in our hearts.”
It marks the fifth anniversary of the death of the Bryants and seven others, killed in a helicopter crash in the hillsides of Calabasas, Calif., as the group made its way to a tournament at Bryant’s Mamba Academy in Thousand Oaks.
Kobe was 41; Gianna, called Gigi, was 13.
The sports world remembered them.
“Forever missed…. Never Forgotten,” former Lakers teammate Caron Butler posted to Instagram along with a photo of the Bryants.
“Thinking of you today and EVERYDAY #Gigi #kobe,” another former teammate, Byron Scott, wrote.
After winning his second consecutive Australian Open, Italian Jannik Sinner changed into a pair of official Kobe Bryant shoes for the trophy ceremony.
Kobe Bryant is remembered every day with a statue outside Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, where a statue of Kobe and Gianna also is displayed.
And tributes throughout the city and the world have gone up in honor of the Bryants through the Kobe & Gianna Bryant mural project, which has overseen the installation of Bryant-themed murals on buildings, basketball courts and other facilities.
According to Kobemural.com, there are 463 murals in the United States — 343 of them in Southern California — plus 183 more in 45-plus countries.
Also killed that day were Orange Coast College baseball coach John Altobelli, wife Keri and their daughter, Alyssa; coach Christina Mauser; Sarah Chester and daughter Payton; and the pilot, AraZobayan.
