Eyal Smener was on the phone in his living room when he heard a loud whirring sound. He thought it might be a helicopter flying much lower than usual up in the hills behind his home in Calabasas, but he did not hang up the phone to investigate. The noise he heard next is one he will not soon forget.
“It was this weird, loud grinding sound,” he said. “And then nothing. Just nothing.”
He didn’t think much about it until his wife told him an hour later there had been a terrible helicopter crash involving Kobe Bryant. Then he knew he had heard the final seconds of Bryant and the other souls lost aboard a helicopter that Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told reporters had claimed the lives of nine people on Sunday morning.
According to L.A. County Fire Chief Daryl Osby, the first emergency call came in at 9:47 a.m. It took firefighters eight minutes to arrive on the scene, and another hour to put out the brush fire caused by the crash.
Smener, 65, was not clad in Lakers purple and gold like most of the people who flooded the intersection of Las Virgenes Road and Willow Glen Street to hold vigil for the city of Los Angeles’ most popular athlete of a generation. Mourners could not get near their hero one last time. The crash site was high above the intersection embedded in a hill that abuts the Santa Monica Mountains.
People gathered near the crash site at Las Virgenes Road and Willow Glen Street. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
Hundreds of people streamed up and down Las Virgenes for hours on Sunday afternoon. Most appeared to be in shock. They wore Bryant’s No. 8 jersey and his No. 24 jersey. They draped themselves in Lakers flags, held hands and hugged. When it was confirmed that Bryant’s daughter Gianna was among those who died, a woman in the crowd began to wail.
The tragic news stunned Southern California. The following is how people — from Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy to downtown L.A. to El Segundo to Newport Beach — mourned the passing of the Lakers legend.
Bryant and his companions had been scheduled to arrive at the Mamba Sports Academy in Newbury Park, approximately 15 miles west of the crash site, at about noon.
The 100,000-square-foot complex buzzed with excitement. The Mamba Cup, a two-day tournament for boys and girls from third through eighth grades, had five games going concurrently at about 11:30 a.m. One participant estimated that 500 people were in the gym, including parents, family members, friends and even just people who wanted to come see Bryant, who founded the academy in 2018 and had been there on Saturday to watch games.
All five courts inside the massive gym hosted games, but Blake Rosenthal, 15, of Thousand Oaks, said people already had formed a large crowd around the court on which 13-year-old Gianna Bryant was scheduled to play. Her father was famous, but “Gigi” was a star herself, a must-watch player for her age group.
News of the crash and the identity of the victims spread slowly at first, with parents in the gym receiving calls or text messages and checking social media. Within minutes, everyone on all five courts knew.
“All of a sudden you just heard screaming and crying,” said Sherri Rosenthal, Blake’s mother.
“My mom called me and told me and I didn’t believe her at first,” Blake Rosenthal said. “Then I started to see people freaking out and showing other people their phones and everything. All at once, it all started happening. It was crazy. My goodness. And then after that, the coaches started to see it and they showed the refs and they started stopping the games.
“Then all the games were stopped and everyone gathered on one court. Everyone was crying and then they started doing prayers and moments of silence for Kobe. People spoke about how he inspired them. It all just happened so fast and it was so crazy.”
A video taken by Sherri Rosenthal showed everyone in the gym kneeling or sitting near one of the main courts. One woman stood and offered a prayer while young players sniffled and wiped their eyes. When she finished and kneeled, a man stood and addressed the group.
The scene inside Mamba Sports Academy after confirmation of the crash. (Courtesy of Sherri Rosenthal)
“That man (Bryant) actually created this environment for all these kids to be able to come together and participate,” he said. “There are players here from all over the country, families here from all over the country. We have to always remember that what we are here for, more than anything else, is that we’re here for these kids, we’re here for the love of the sport and we’re also here for one another.
“In moments like these, it’s obvious that the most important thing is life. The most important thing is fellowship. The most important thing is faith. The most important thing is unity.”
Shortly after, everyone stood and started to hug. The rest of the tournament was canceled and its participants filtered out a back door and toward the parking lot. Some paused to take solemn pictures of the Mamba Sports Academy sign over the door. Some left quickly but others lingered. One parent was overheard saying, “I don’t want to stay here but I don’t want to leave, either.”
Outside the front door, a tribute area already had started, with mourners placing candles, flowers and Bryant jerseys on the ground. People who hadn’t been involved with the tournament parked on a quiet street, then walked toward the front of the building, located in a nondescript industrial park, to pay respects.
Ryan Clarke needed verification.
A lifelong Lakers fan, he had been at Staples Center on the night Kobe’s jerseys, Nos. 8 and 24, were retired. He had been at Staples in November when Kobe and Gigi sat courtside for a game between the Lakers and Atlanta Hawks.
He felt compelled on Sunday to go back there, or as close as he could get.
With Staples Center hosting the Grammy Awards, the arena itself was blocked off. So Clarke joined the mass of fans gathering across the street at L.A. Live. Like so many of them, he wore a Bryant jersey and a blank expression as he looked up at looming screens that featured a black-and-white image of Bryant’s face with the message “In Loving Memory of Kobe Bryant 1978-2020.”
“I had to come down here to see if it was real,” Clarke said. “I got here and saw the flower arrangement and I just stared at it for, like, 10 minutes. It’s just unreal. It makes no sense at all.”
That was a common sentiment in downtown Los Angeles.
Fans gathered at Staples Center to remember Kobe. (Harrison Hill / USA Today)
On the outskirts of the crowd, Lakers fan Mark Smith — a Bryant fan long before a move from Michigan to L.A. — told a friend on the phone that it all felt like a bad dream he needed to escape.
“I’m lost for words now,” Smith said.
Not everyone was.
The scene at L.A. Live was a reminder of the breadth of Bryant’s impact and of all the ways we can say goodbye. Fans chanted “KO-BE!” and “M-V-P!” One man yelled from the edge of the crowd, “We love you, Mambacito!” Another boomed “Kobe will live forever!”
Some of them needed to scream. Others had come to connect.
A guy named Sean introduced himself to a stranger, getting his name and then asking, “How did Kobe touch you?” Artist Ernest Washington brought a large sketch he’d drawn of Bryant and a stack of pencils so that people who passed him could sign it, a melancholy keepsake of a tragic day.
There were those in search of quiet contemplation, too. One woman wandered through the crowd with tears streaming down her face, seemingly in search of space away from the din. A young man wearing a white Bryant jersey and a backward hat covered his mouth in shock and rubbed his eyes. As cameras clicked pics and rolled videos around him, his phone stayed mostly in his pocket. When asked to talk about the scene he said quietly, “I’m gonna pass.”
They didn’t all need to talk. They just needed to be there.
By 3 p.m., the scene at L.A. Live had become surreal. With the Grammys approaching, the Bryant jerseys mixed with fitted suits and tuxedos and flowing, garish gowns. One man stood with a small bouquet of flowers, uncertain if he could wade through the chanting crowd and find a spot to rest them.
But it wasn’t always so boisterous.
Just 40 minutes before, someone had let loose the day’s first balloon, purple and in the shape of a star. It sparked another of the crowd’s chants — “KO-BE! KO-BE!” — but soon it drifted out of sight, and for a moment everything was calm. The disbelief lingered over everything again.
One of Ruben Meniane’s employees at Shoe Palace on Melrose Avenue yelled out on the store’s walkie-talkie system that Bryant had died. Quickly, Meniane checked the internet to see if the news was true — shock and disbelief was a common theme for sports fans throughout L.A. on this day — and then tried to come up with a plan.
On the Genesee Avenue side of the Shoe Palace building is a well-known mural commemorating Bryant’s last game, and he knew people would probably come and pay tribute. He decided the store needed to make sure everything would run smoothly, so people could mourn in a peaceful way.
The idea he had was simple — station a staffer on the corner of Melrose and Genesee to hand out sticky notes for fans to scribble messages about Bryant and place them on the mural.
“We had supplies. We were pretty much prepared. So yeah it was just open the drawer, get a few hundred Post-its, a box of pens and let’s try to take care of the people in the L.A. crowd,” Meniane said. “(We’re) just facilitating the process and not making it a hassle for anybody, where even though this is a sad day we want to try to remember the good things about Kobe.”
The notes, along with flowers and other items laid at the foot of the mural, made for a powerful and peaceful image.
Fans left notes on the Kobe Bryant mural outside Shoe Palace. (Josh Cooper / The Athletic)
Overall, it was a way that all fans in the area could honor Bryant.
“The ups, the downs, the tears, the joy, and Kobe has been there all along. He meant a lot to me personally,” Meniane said. “If there’s anything I can do to facilitate his memory and what people are going to do, that’s the least I can do.”
Up the block from Shoe Palace was a subtle homage to Bryant — street art so fresh you could still see the paint on the sidewalk.
Just last week, Jazz Guetta had created it to honor Bryant’s 81 points in 2006 against the Toronto Raptors. People who noticed it seemed to do double-takes, since it wasn’t on the list of Kobe murals that were searchable on the internet.
The artist himself couldn’t believe how his work had suddenly become tragically relevant in the wake of Bryant’s death.
“When I saw today’s news it was really weird. It was definitely really weird that I was painting him and celebrating his career and he passes away like a blink of an eye later,” Guetta said via phone. “It’s crazy news and it still hasn’t hit me.”
Jazz Guetta’s mural of Kobe Bryant. (Josh Cooper / The Athletic)
Guetta had wanted to mark Bryant’s 81 points for some time with art but just hadn’t gotten around to doing it. Then he saw that spot and knew it was the right location to paint Bryant.
“I kind of buckled down and put it on my calendar early and I just painted it,” he said. “I painted it last week. It took me a couple of hours. I went through the night. I did it in Laker colors to commemorate his legacy playing entirely for the Lakers his whole career.”
Guetta said he’s starting to plan a bigger piece to commemorate Bryant’s life.
“It’s just crazy how Kobe has touched so many people and I thought about just celebrating that milestone in his career and this happens,” Guetta said. “You really see how many people are touched and inspired by Kobe in his career and as a person.”
The Diaz family happened to drive by the Lakers’ training facility in El Segundo three weeks ago as part of their normal commute. On Sunday afternoon, they felt pulled back by a desire to pay their respects to Bryant, soon after attending a fundraiser at the children’s school, St. Anthony’s in El Segundo.
“The whole world is just sad,” said Evangelina Diaz of Inglewood, who was there with her two sons and daughter.
The Lakers practice at UCLA Health Training Center, having moved there from nearby Toyota Sports Center in 2017, a year after Bryant retired. It is a quiet area of El Segundo, even on weekdays.
Youngsters were playing soccer across the street from the training center, a usual sight on a Sunday. Only on this day, television crews and media members were positioned outside on the sidewalk — not permitted to enter the parking lot or get near the impromptu shrine with floral arrangements honoring Bryant in front of a sign with the Lakers logo.
“There were some people crying really hard,” Diaz said. “You have pain.”
The Diaz family outside the Lakers’ practice facility. (Lisa Dillman / The Athletic)
That’s what Dr. Earl Harley and his wife felt when they learned of Bryant’s death on Sunday.
“I was sitting in church this morning and looked at my phone,” said Harley, a pediatric surgeon at Georgetown University, who left Los Angeles in 1993 but was in town for a visit. “We went by the Staples Center, but it was wall-to-wall traffic. We heard on the radio that people were coming here. We thought we’d just drive over.”
Harley’s connection with the team goes back to the Showtime Lakers days with Magic Johnson.
“I was here when Magic was playing at the Forum,” he said. “James Worthy. I used to go to the Forum to see the Lakers. I never saw Kobe play, not in person.”
He talked about the unifying impact of the Lakers and Bryant on the city and the region.
“That’s what sports will do — unify people,” Harley said. “That’s why I love sports. It brings people together.”
Cars went up and down Pelicans Drive in Newport Beach on Sunday afternoon and into the early evening. Pedestrians too. More than usual, no doubt. Some paused at a spot outside a gated community in Newport Coast, then left. Others stayed for hours. But it was quiet and stayed that way, as it usually does in a neighborhood where residents cherish solitude.
Sadly, this was no regular Sunday. Men and women, young and old — some of whom wore No. 8 and No. 24 Lakers jerseys — brought flowers, balloons, flags, portraits and basketballs in tribute. This was their way to process and grieve the death of Bryant.
Bryant lived in south Orange County with his wife, Vanessa, and their four children. But to those who live in this area, Bryant was more than their most famous resident. He was a neighbor who didn’t mind being approached at the nearby gym, gas station or coffee house.
“There’s a park right around the corner,” said Bryan Rios, a Huntington Beach resident who routinely visits a co-worker in Newport Coast. “A public park up here. He’d be shooting basketballs at night. 8 o’clock, 9 o’clock at night, all by himself.”
A memorial emerged outside the gated community where Kobe lived. (Eric Stephens / The Athletic)
Wearing a yellow Lakers hat, Rios said he wanted to stop and meet Bryant but talked himself out of it. He’d remember what a friend told him: “People live up here for a reason: They want to be left alone.”
Bryant was given his space, especially in his adopted hometown. But he was no stranger. He didn’t have an entourage. He was out in public like everyone else.
“My husband, Wayne, is out walking our dog, Abby,” Julie Hermes recalled. “And he comes home and says, ‘I saw Kobe today. Kobe came and talked to us.’
“He talked to people. The dogs. Everybody. He just blended into the community. He will be missed.”
Hermes, a real-estate broker and Newport resident, met the Bryant family. She said Javier’s, an upscale Mexican restaurant in beachside Crystal Cove, was “their place.” She and the Bryants have been members of Our Lady of Queen Angels Catholic Church. She arrived at the makeshift memorial at 1:30 p.m. after going to Mass. The service was dedicated to Kobe, Gianna and the other seven victims.
“Everybody was stunned,” Hermes said, noting how Bryant would quietly arrive late and leave early. “When everybody walked out, everybody was still. And then everybody was on their cell phones. And nobody was really talking. It was just very somber. Because he was a big presence.
“It’s just stunning. It’s kind of like Princess Diana. This isn’t just affecting this community or California or the United States. It’s affecting the world. It’s world recognized. He’s a world figure.”
Tears were shed for Kobe in Newport Beach. (Eric Stephens / The Athletic)
David Winslett wore his No. 8 jersey that he bought in 1996, Bryant’s rookie year. Winslett said that also was the year he first met his basketball hero.
“We were at Bandera right here in Corona del Mar,” he said. “It was his birthday. We talked. Had dinner. It was nice.”
Winslett lived near Bryant and said they often would cross paths.
“He was more like a brother to me,” he said. “I would see him on his way to practice. On his way to the games. Even after retirement. I just saw him on my birthday last month. He was an icon.
“He works out at the gym where I work at. Once or twice a day sometimes. Just talking with him. He’s just inspirational to all of us. He would invite the kids down and have them work out. Things of that nature.
“It’s just tragic. He’ll be dearly missed.”
There was worldwide reaction to Bryant’s death, and it really hit home in his backyard.
The Anaheim Ducks practiced Sunday at their facility just a 30-minute drive away in Irvine. They were preparing for a game Monday in San Jose. As they finished their workout and headed into the dressing room, a large television was tuned to the local news. The players didn’t need to know Bryant directly to be affected.
“It’s definitely a big reality check for everybody, I think, when you’re talking about somebody losing their loved ones like that,” said Ryan Getzlaf, the longtime Ducks star and captain.
“Whether he’s a star or not, he’s got a family. His kid’s involved. All that kind of stuff.
“It’s just heartbreaking. And I think it’s important to point out that he is an Orange County guy. He’s been on the Newport Coast for a long time and he’s got a lot of family and friends around this area. Obviously, our condolences go out to his wife and their family. It’s hard to see anything like that.”
Ducks owner Henry Samueli told The Athletic: “Susan and I join countless others in mourning the devastating loss of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and everyone on board the tragic helicopter crash this morning. Kobe’s impact on all sports is immeasurable, as are his contributions to the community. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the families of the victims.”
Emilio Robles needed a drink.
The news was almost too much to take, and so he touched base with some friends and headed to Common Space Brewery in Hawthorne, where his Bryant jersey wasn’t the only one.
“I came out here with my friends to have a beer,” Robles said. “Honestly, I’m gonna be real, to get drunk and forget what’s going on — the TV, the news. I don’t still want to believe it. I really don’t want to believe it.”
Robles and his friends grew up in L.A., their youth like so many here shaped by Bryant’s greatness. As he stood by the bar in need of a fresh drink, Brian Borras called the Kobe/Shaq NBA title three-peat “the best time of my life.”
He was in middle school then. Before drinks on Sunday, he was in Hollywood looking to book a wedding venue. The owner of the banquet hall he sought was the one who broke the news. The owner’s phone had blown up as they worked through a contract, and when Borras took his son to use the restroom, the man checked the messages he had missed. Borras heard him scream, “Are you serious?”
Everyone swapped those where-were-you stories on Sunday, but they wanted to talk about more than that.
They needed to remember the Kobe moments. They wanted to share the ways they had connected with him even if they had never met.
Robles is a longtime Bryant fan whose appreciation only grew three years ago when Robles had a daughter. He loved to watch Bryant be a father to his daughters and see him be so insistent that he didn’t need a son to pass on a basketball legacy.
Given the chance, Robles would have told him so.
Robles works at LAX, and though he’s seen the Lakers land there, he never had the chance to meet Bryant or shake his hand and tell him how his “Mamba Mentality” literally got Robles out of bed before dawn.
“Being up at 4 in the morning, it’s a struggle,” Robles said. “The only thing that helps you in your mind is you say, ‘Come on, Mamba this shit out. Four in the morning. Let’s get up. Kobe does it. Why can’t you do it?’”
Robles could go on and on about the “Mamba Mentality.” He started to and then he stopped. His voice broke as he said, “Shit, Kobe. We miss you man. We really do.”
Some just needed to say it. Some needed to shout. And some just needed to share.
Some of them needed to cry.
“Kobe made everyone happy in L.A.,” Borras said. “So if you didn’t shed a tear today …”
He paused, and his friend Angel Castillo finished the sentence.
“Then you ain’t L.A.,” Castillo said. “That’s Kobe Bryant, man. It’s Kobe Bryant.”
— The Athletic‘s Molly Knight, Rich Hammond, Brett Dawson, Josh Cooper, Lisa Dillman and Eric Stephens contributed to this report.
(Top photo of Lakers fan Victor Chavez: Rachel Luna / Getty Images)
