Fans of the National Basketball
Association with an in-depth knowledge of the American pro-ball league’s
history would know that the silhouette of a dribbling basketball player on the
NBA logo is based on a real person. League officials would prefer the official
story that it is a generalization of an NBA player, but the silhouette is
actually that of 1960-74 LA Laker (and eventual coach) Jerry West. With the
recent tragic passing of another Laker for a more contemporary generation, the
call has suddenly intensified for the changing of the NBA logo silhouette to
honor none other than Kobe Bryant.
NBC Sports tells us that an online petition to the NBA to revise
their league logo to carry a silhouette likeness of Kobe Bryant has been
gaining steady steam in terms of support. That is no mere figure either. The
petition only appeared on Change.org at around the same day that the death of
Bryant in a California helicopter crash this Sunday, January 26, but it has
already amassed more than 2.6 million signatures. Such has been the outpouring of
emotional nostalgia for the career-long Laker who joined the team in 1996 and
left with his retirement in 2016 that the petition has exponentially exploded.
The use of the likeness of Jerry
West for the modern NBA logo which debuted in 1971 (on West’s 11th
year with the Lakers) was described by the now-aged-81 executive of the LA
Clippers as both flattering and a source of some embarrassment for him. One of
his player nicknames became “The Logo” because of it. West even felt as early
as 2017 that it might be appropriate for the league to replace his silhouette
with another player, jokingly suggesting that another Laker take his place. That
does not sound like a joke now, with the call for Black Mamba to be the next Logo.
Tributes for Kobe Bryant, who
died in the crash with his daughter Gianna and seven others, continued through
the week. Talk show host Jimmy Fallon recalled how he met then-rookie Kobe back
when he was a newish stand-up comic in LA during a party in the nineties. They had
gone on a beer run for the party and got a delivery-only store to let them buy
beer directly when Bryant identified himself as a Laker. Other talk-show hosts
like Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden and Ellen DeGeneres also gave tribute
monologues.
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