The Los Angeles Lakers — the team Kobe Bryant played for his entire NBA career — are in mourning.
On Wednesday, Lakers coach Frank Vogel made his first public comment since the 41-year-old athlete’s death, opening up about how the team has been affected by tragedy — in which Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other victims perished in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California on Sunday.
For Vogel, 46, and the Lakers, the last two days have been “extremely emotional.”
“I’m around the people closest with Kobe throughout his time here,” he said. “It’s been just a deeply saddening time for all of us.”
Drafted by the NBA at 17 in 1996, Bryant spent his entire 20-year career with the Lakers where he led the team to five NBA championships and became the youngest player to score 30,000 points.
Vogel recalled pulling aside each player on his team during a flight from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to inform them of Bryant’s passing, describing the process as a “daunting task” to take on as a coach.
“Some of them had seen the reports and some had not,” he remembered. “It was a daunting task of grabbing each guy one-on-one and letting them know.”
As PEOPLE previously reported, the NBA postponed the Lakers’ game against the L.A. Clippers that was initially scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 28 out of respect for those grieving.
Instead of practicing, the Lakers gathered that day for some “therapeutically beneficial” teamwork.
“I wanted our guys to come in mentally free,” he said. “But to just sweat, touch the ball, to be around each other and then we had a lunch where we all spent time together and grieved together.”
He continued, “It’s just strengthened what we’ve felt all year about our current group.”
“We’ve become a family in a very short time. It’s something you talk about in the NBA with your teams. But this group in particular has really grown to love each other very rapidly. We understand the importance and the opportunity that we have this year. This has just brought us closer together.”
Vogel added that the Lakers hopes to “represent what Kobe was about” this season, explaining, “We always wanted to make him proud and that’s not going to be any different here.”
“He was the most feared man in the league for an entire generation,” the coach said. “The influence is profound league-wide, basketball community-wide, world-wide, Lakers family-wide.”
An NBA source told PEOPLE on Wednesday that the sports organization is still reeling from Bryant’s untimely passing.
“It’s just been total sadness,” the source said. “It’s sadness for his family, it’s sadness for basketball and then there’s sadness for women’s basketball.”
Bryant — who called himself a “girl dad” because of his love for his daughters and passion to watch them succeed, especially in sports — played a huge role in Gianna’s budding career and women’s basketball as a whole, which the source says brought people “a lot of excitement” as to what “Kobe was doing in that arena.”
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“I think that there was a bright future for the game because he was going to be so involved. Some of the discussions that we’re having is that there’s a challenge for some of our other great NBA players to accept that role and jump in where he left off,” the source added.
Bryant and his daughter Gianna were reportedly on their way to a youth basketball game in Thousand Oaks with parents and players from the Mamba Sports Academy girls’ team when their helicopter crashed into a hill. The two died alongside pilot Ara Zobayan, Sarah and Payton Chester, Christina Mauser, John Altobelli, his wife Keri Altobelli and their daughter, Alyssa Altobelli.
Bryant is survived by wife Vanessa, 37, and their daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, 3, and Capri, 7 months.
from PEOPLE.com https://ift.tt/2S6B2Ai
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