'Kobe Was Our King': L.A. Unites in Grief

Word of Kobe Bryant’s death ricocheted around a mist-shrouded Echo Park Lake, where the usual Sunday mix of joggers, food vendors and residents of a tree-shaded homeless encampment reacted with utter disbelief.

Fans showed up in droves to pay their respects at Staples Center, to toast the Los Angeles Lakers legend, to light candles, to cry and to pray.

“He was not a perfect man, but we all have our faults,” Joe Rivas, a 28-year-old registered nurse, told my colleague Miriam Jordan. “It’s beyond basketball.”

The tributes to Bryant rolled in from around the country Sunday after the news broke that he had been killed in a helicopter crash along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people.

But the shock of Bryant’s death at 41 hit particularly hard in Southern California, where people across geographic, economic and cultural divides were united for the day — in grief.

Although Bryant was a global celebrity who transformed the NBA, fans said he always felt like a true local.

“Kobe was our king,” John Epiceno, 63, told me as he gazed at Echo Park Lake, the swan boats gliding past. “He stood for L.A.”

Epiceno showed me a Dodgers tattoo on one forearm, and a tattoo that read “Rams” on the other. On his back, he said, was his Lakers ink.

A lifelong Angeleno, Epiceno said he admired Bryant’s efforts to help the poor in Los Angeles and to work in struggling communities.

But he said he also looked forward to Bryant adding to his basketball legacy: He had hoped Bryant would someday return to the Lakers as coach.

In Fullerton, the manager of a Mexican restaurant told The Daily Pilot about the carnitas and flan Bryant would order to take back to his family in Newport Coast. Bryant would stand in line like any other patron, the manager told the paper.

On a phone call from Ocean’s Eleven Casino — a no-frills poker room in Oceanside, where conversation was quickly dominated by the crash — former University of Michigan basketball coach Bill Frieder told me he was devastated to hear about the death of Bryant, whom he had known to be generous with his time.

But then he heard Bryant’s daughter, too, had died. It was an added sting he struggled to put into words.

Frieder, who lives in Del Mar, had seen Gianna Bryant play in the San Diego area. Even at 11 or 12, the girl seemed on track to be as good as her father, easily outshining teenage boys on the court.

“It’s a tragedy. It’s just horrific,” he said. “It’s awful.”

Suzi Farajiani, 34, talked to my colleague Louis Keene near the crash site in Calabasas. She told him she remembered the day Bryant was drafted.

“We’ve seen him through so many phases of his life,” she said. “He’s human.”

Later in the day, at Staples Center, Miriam saw women in gowns and men in suits arriving for the Grammy Awards blend into the crowd of fans in jeans and purple and gold jerseys.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .