Tag: lakers

No. 24: Kobe Bryant

fartheroffthewall

This is the latest post for an ongoing media project — SoCal Sports History 101: The Prime Numbers from 00 to 99 that Uniformly, Uniquely and Unapologetically Reveal The Narrative of Our Region’s Athletic Heritage.  Pick a number and highlight an athlete — person, place or thing — most obviously connected to it by fame and fortune, someone who isn’t so obvious, and then take a deeper dive into the most interesting story tied to it. It’s a combination of star power, achievement, longevity, notoriety, and, above all, what makes that athlete so Southern California. Quirkiness and notoriety factor in. And it should open itself to more discussion and debate — which is what sports is best at doing.

The most obvious choices for No. 24:

= Kobe Bryant: Los Angeles Lakers
= Walter Alston: Los Angeles Dodgers
= Freeman McNeil: UCLA football
= Dwayne Polee,Manual Arts High basketball

The not-so-obvious choices for No. 24:
= Marion Morrison: USC football

The most interesting story for No. 24:
Kobe Bryant: Los Angeles Lakers guard (2006-07 to 2015-16), also wearing No. 8 (1996-97 to 2005-06)
Southern California map pinpoints:
Long Beach, Los Angeles (Staples Center), Newport Beach, Thousand Oaks

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A sun-splashed mural of Kobe and Gianna Bryant on 4th Street in the Little Tokyo/Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, between Alameda and Seaton.

Momba murals, we have come to calling them. Brilliantly splashed across the sides of hotels, restaurants, pawn shops and abandoned warehouses.

They provide varied interpretation and a longing for artists inspired to creatively honor Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gianna. They have become as much as the city’s fabric and context as much as a place to reflect and ponder “what if” as well as what was.

They are at best coping mechanism for those who designed them an expression of grief mixed with tribute. They should be numbered and catalogued as if part of a unique SoCal art gallery.

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A mural of Kobe Bryant wearing a Dodgers’ No. 24 uniform as part of a larger mural with Dodgers players at a drive-through hamburger stand in Redondo Beach on Pacific Coast Highway includes Bryant wearing a black wristband that honor the numbers 2, 8 and 24.

Websites dedicated to these works claim, as one says, to finding nearly 350 renditions just in the greater Los Angeles area.

There are more than 450 in the U.S.

Another 175 are around the globe.

The L.A. Times has tried to post the best of them, including updates with works that have lately popped up on Venice Beach.

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