The second of three statues honoring the late Lakers player Kobe Bryant outside Crypto.com Arena will be unveiled Friday in a private ceremony, a person familiar with the event but not authorized to discuss it publicly confirmed to The Times.
The statue will honor Bryant and his daughter, Gianna, who were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020, in Calabasas.
It is not known when the statue will be available for public viewing.
The date of the unveiling, Aug. 2, 2024, is significant because it involves the jersey numbers 8 and 24 that Bryant wore with the Lakers, as well as the jersey number 2 that Gianna wore as a player for Bryant's Mamba Academy.
The first Bryant statue at Crypto.com Arena was unveiled on an equally significant date in February (8/2/24). The 19-foot, 4,000-pound bronze monument features Bryant in his No. 8 jersey. He's pointing skyward in a recreation of an image from his 81-point performance against the Toronto Raptors in 2006.
“For the record,” his wife Vanessa Bryant said at the unveiling ceremony, “Kobe chose the pose you're about to see, so if anyone has a problem with that, go fuck yourself.”
An inscription below the statue shows the result of that match. The statue initially included misspellings of two players' names along with the word “decision.” Those typos have since been corrected.
The third planned statue, to be unveiled at a later date, will show Bryant in his No. 24 jersey, which he wore for the final 10 years of his 20-year career with the Lakers.
Times sStaff writer Dan Woike contributed to this report.
