LA mourns Kobe Bryant, activist and icon: ‘We didn’t just lose a basketball player’
February 1, 2020Tributes spring up across the city, where many saw him as a beacon of hope in an era of deep division
In Los Angeles, everyone is mourning Kobe Bryant in their own way.
Within hours of his death on Sunday morning, his name was popping up on city buses and commuter trains, in graffiti spray-painted on random walls, and in a thousand tributes left outside the downtown Staples Center, which witnessed the peak of his glory as one of basketballs towering greats.
Latino fans commended his soul to the Virgin of Guadalupe. People were crying in public, and a number of black families were wearing Kobe jerseys as they walked to school on Monday morning.
Artists found space to paint large murals depicting Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who died with him. His basketball numbers popped up on the ferris wheel of the Santa Monica pier and on the marquee of a downtown theater. City leaders, meanwhile, lit up public buildings and fountains in purple and gold, the colors of the Lakers, for whom Bryant played all 20 of his professional seasons.
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