Local basketball coaches react to Bryant’s death

JACKSON, Tenn. — “It would have been nice to have met him. I have never seen a player play with so much passion,” Lane College Athletic Director Derrick Burroughs said.

NBA legendary player Kobe Bryant, his 13 year-old daughter and others were killed Sunday when a helicopter they were in crashed in Calabasas, California.

“For my players, he’s been a guy that we’ve often pointed to for just an example for work ethic. Kobe was blessed with some great talents, some great God given gifts,” Union University men’s head basketball coach David Niven said.

“For a lot of people that enjoyed sports and Kobe Bryant and basketball, NBA basketball, it’s a tough pill to swallow,” Burroughs said.

Those killed in the crash included Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna; Orange Coast College baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife Keri and daughter Alyssa, who played basketball with Gianna; Christina Mauser, Sarah and Peyton Chester and pilot Ara Zobayan.

They were on their way to a basketball game where Bryant was expected to coach, and his daughter was expected to play.

Coaches say Bryant’s skill will have a lasting impact on fans and players.

“I think he’ll have a lasting impact on the generation he played with and even generations to come, and mostly just in the way he went about his business and being so professional,” Freed Hardeman University men’s head basketball coach Drew Stutts said. “He was just one of those guys that was so different than anyone else. My hero growing up was Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant is the closest thing to Michael Jordan than probably ever will be in the way that he went about how he did everything and how hard he worked.”

Investigators are trying determine the cause of the helicopter crash.