Tuesday 25 February 2020 05:01, UK
Thousands of mourners will gather at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Monday to say farewell to Kobe and Gianna Bryant.
The basketball superstar and his 13-year-old daughter will be honoured in a public memorial at the arena where Bryant played for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Kobe and Gianna Bryant died along with seven others on January 26 in a helicopter crash.
The Celebration of Life will feature speakers reflecting on Kobe Bryant's impact on his sport and the world, along with music and retrospectives on Bryant's on-court achievements. Bryant became active in film, television and writing after he retired from basketball in 2016.
Bryant's family, dozens of sports greats and many major figures in Bryant's public life are expected to attend.
Staples Center is sold out for the memorial. The money made from ticket sales will be given to the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation, which supports youth sports programs in underserved communities and teaches sports to girls and women.
Bryant played his entire 20-year NBA career with the Lakers, including the final 17 seasons at Staples Center, which opened in 1999. The five-time NBA champion's two retired jersey numbers - eight and 24 - hang high above the arena where he became the third-leading scorer in league history until Lakers star LeBron James passed him on the night before Bryant's death.
Bryant's death caused an outpouring of grief across Los Angeles, where he remained the city's most popular athlete, even in retirement. Dozens of public memorials and murals have been installed around the sprawling metropolis, and thousands of fans gathered daily outside Staples Center to mourn Bryant's death after the crash.
Symbolic meanings will run throughout the ceremony, which will be held on a 24-foot-by-24-foot stage. Vanessa Bryant, Kobe's wife and Gianna's mother, chose February 24 as the date in honour of the uniform numbers of Kobe and Gianna, who wore No 2 on her youth basketball teams.
A private funeral was held for Kobe and Gianna Bryant in Orange County on February 7.
The six passengers travelling with Kobe Bryant and his daughter in the helicopter that crashed into a Southern California mountainside last month were joined by their love of basketball.
Among them, two team-mates of Bryant's 13-old-daughter, a coach with a rising profile in girls' basketball and three parents of basketball-crazed children. Their pilot, who was taking them to a basketball tournament, was a veteran flier whose friends and customers said was exactly the guy a passenger would want at the controls.
John, Keri and Alyssa Altobelli
John Altobelli was a renowned figure in college baseball. The 56-year-old had led his Orange Coast College baseball team to more than 700 victories and four state championships during a 27-year career that earned him national coach of the year honours in 2019 from the American Baseball Coaches Association.
Basketball was his 14-year-old daughter Alyssa's sport, however, and she was a team-mate of Gianna Bryant who hoped to someday play college ball. She also loved animals, according to friends, so much so that she took home turtles from her school's science class if she feared they were being mistreated.
Friends remembered her 46-year-old mother, Keri, as a dedicated mother and wife who made it a point to attend all of her children's games, joking that she'd sat in a particular spot in the bleachers so many times she should have a plaque there with her name engraved on it.
The Altobellis are survived by two other children.
Sarah and Payton Chester
Sarah Chester, a former college volleyball player, was traveling to the game with her 13-year-old daughter, Payton, who was also a team-mate of Gianna Bryant.
Payton played on both the Mamba girls team and for St Margarets Episcopal School, where she was an eighth-grader and her 45-year-old mother was a member of the board of trustees.
Payton, her father said, had hoped to play in the WNBA someday. She found joy on any court and loved all of her team-mates and coaches, he said shortly after her death.
Of his wife he said, Sarah was full of life and the glue of our family.
Christina Mauser
Christina Mauser, an assistant coach of the Mamba girls team traveling that day to the Mamba Cup tournament in Thousand Oaks, was establishing herself as a superior basketball coach.
Kobe Bryant had personally recruited her for his Mamba Sports Academy after seeing her coach girls basketball at the private school in Southern California that his daughter attended.
Mauser, 38, had been a star athlete herself, in volleyball and basketball, at Huntington Beach's Edison High School, where she was inducted into the school's Athletic Hall of Fame.
A wife and mother of three, Mauser drew praise from players, several of whom called her a second mum.
Ara Zobayan
When you went up in a helicopter, people said, Ara Zobayan was the guy you would want at the controls.
He not only greeted everyone with a big grin but was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots around, with top ratings and more than 8,200 hours of flight time amassed over two decades.
"That is a guy who you ask for to fly you from city to city," said LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard. He often flew with Zobayan, whom he said would tell him from time to time that Bryant had asked him to remember to say hello.
Zobayan was chief pilot for Island Express Helicopters and had flown Bryant to another Mamba Cup game the day before.
"He was one of their best pilots," Leonard said.
