The Los Angeles Lakers competing Friday night in their first game at Staples Center since the death of the famous basketball player.
tears of purple and gold in “the house that Kobe Bryant built”: the Lakers, the star LeBron James in the head, at the height of emotion, have made a vibrant tribute to their legend disappeared in a helicopter crash Friday at the Staples Center.
the hall of The Downtown Los Angeles hosted the first game of the Lakers, in the face of Portland since the tragedy occurred Sunday, three days after the postponement of the duel “angelino” against the Clippers, so impossible to play.
Two days earlier, they were learning as the entire world, shaken, the tragedy. This crash fatal to Bryant, her daughter Gianna, 13, and seven other persons, which occurred on the hill in Calabasas, north-west of L. A. LeBron, whose images in tears at Los Angeles airport this afternoon have been around the world, was still for the national anthem sung by Boyz II Men.
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IN PICTURES >> Death of Kobe Bryant : the world pays tribute to the legend of basketball
He held firm in not crackling at the time you speak to a “real, true family”, the “Lakers Nation”, to honor the one that he considered “a big brother”, after having mentioned the names of the victims: Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant, John Altobelli, Keri Altobelli, Alyssa Altobelli, Sarah Chester, Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, Ara Zobayan.
“I know that at any given time, we will have a memorial for Kobe, but I see it as a celebration this evening. A celebration of twenty years of blood, sweat, tears, body bruised, and hours are not counted, of determination, to be as great as it could be,” said the “King”.
“this is what Kobe Bryant would”
“tonight, we celebrate the kid who came here at 18, retired at 38, and is likely to become the best father that we have seen in the past three years,” said James, who made a tattoo on a thigh “Mamba 4 Life” (“Mamba for life”) written under a serpent coiled into a 24 and an 8.
“I’m going to continue with my teammates to continue her legacy, not only this year but as long as we can continue to play basketball, we like it, because this is what Kobe Bryant wants”, he concluded. After which, he was embraced by his teammates, each having been then introduced by the speaker of one and the same way: “from the Lower Merion High School, with the number 24, Kobe Bryant”.
Under the eyes of the teammates from Gianna, of the “Mamba Academy”, invited “courtside” (the edge of the parquet, editor’s note), the match was then started, without any action performed during the 24,2 first few seconds. The numbers of “Kobe” and “Gigi” chanted at the same time by the public. At half-time, the rapper Wiz Khalifa and singer Charlie Puth have interpreted the title “See You Again”.
An hour later, the Lakers lost against the Blazers (127-119), but tonight the result mattered little. The celebrations had started much earlier in a Staples Center full of 19 000 people had donned the yellow t-shirt found on their seat.
In the dim light, in front of two sheaves of yellow roses formed her numbers fetishes, the rapper Usher has sung “Amazing Grace”. A single light remained, all up there on the ceiling, that was riveted on the two t-shirts removed from the legend. Those of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Shaquille O’neal does trônaient not as usually on their side.
“Take care of us”
and Then a video recounting what it was like Kobe was broadcast, on a theme played by the cellist Ben Hong. He speaks of his love of the game, of his famous “Mamba mentality” that has allowed him to achieve the impossible, as these five NBA titles offered to the Lakers. It proclaims also his love for Vanessa, his wife, and their four daughters.
outside, well before the meeting, thousands of people had flocked. Many have written a word on the huge tables at their disposal. And as the place lacked, it is the ground floor of the L. A. Live adjacent to Staples Center that has been blackened. Walking in the middle of candles, flowers, pictures littered the ground, you could cross a lot of people come to collect it – “it is tonight it should be there,” said a fan, people in the middle of the sentence too, like this father of a family of some forty years, sustained by his teenage son.
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Not far away, a group formed to watch a painter at work. “It is a gift that I’m going to do the next week with Vanessa and the girls,” said Reza Safa, ensuring awareness of the Bryant, about this impressionist painting creating a picture well known to Kobe, bearing on his shoulders his daughter, Gianna, who looks at the sky.
up There just to rot in a sky a clear blue as there has not been since Sunday, police helicopters were watching this show. On top of that, the dead hero has probably had to answer this to the call of the fans and this kid’s screaming: “Look after us Kobe”, “Take care of us, Kobe”.
