Report: Kobe Bryant statue is being ‘protected like it’s the Hope Diamond’ during Crypto.com Arena renovation

The Los Angeles Lakers’ home arena — Crypto.com Arena — is reportedly undergoing renovation at the moment, and ESPN’s Brian Windhorst revealed that the statue of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant is being heavily protected during the construction.

“The Lakers — well, right now the Lakers can’t use Crypto.com,” Windhorst said of the fact that the Lakers haven’t played a preseason game at the arena. “There’s a major renovation going on — not major, but there’s a pretty heavy renovation going on there right now, especially outside the building ’cause I was there all week. Chick Hearn Court — which is the street that fronted the arena — is not there anymore. It’s been totally ripped up, it doesn’t exist. I think that that section is gonna be closed anyway. I don’t think that road is gonna exist anymore. By the way, you should see — there’s dirt everywhere, you know? They’ve ripped up all the concrete. They’ve ripped up all the road. There’s guys working on the roof of Crypto. There’s guys working on the outside of Crypto.

“They’re redoing all kinds of stuff. The Kobe statue is protected like it’s the Hope Diamond — there’s big, giant barriers and padding around. No one is getting close to the Kobe statue. They were pouring concrete all around it this week, I was watching them do it and there was twice as many workers working around the statue as there were other places. They were — that statue was being treated with special — I think they would call it bespoke handling, white-glove handling by the construction workers on the Kobe statue area.”

Back in February the Lakers unveiled a bronze statue of Bryant outside of Crypto.com Arena that stands at 19 feet tall. The statue was sculpted by Julie Rotblatt-Amrany.

The work of art depicts Bryant donning his No. 8 Lakers jersey and pointing one of the fingers on his right hand towards the sky. Bryant made this pose after he had the best individual scoring performance of his pro career, when he scored 81 points on 28-of-46 shooting from the field and 7-of-13 from 3-point range versus the Toronto Raptors in January of 2006.

Interestingly, Bryant’s statue initially contained several misspellings. In total, three misspelled names and words could be spotted.

First, Jose Calderon’s name was incorrectly spelled out as “Calderson.” Another former NBA player in Von Wafer had his first name written out as “Vom,” and decision was spelled as “Decicion.”

But those aforementioned spelling mistakes were later corrected.

Bryant is widely considered to be Laker royalty among fans of the storied franchise, and that’s because of the legendary 20-year career he carved out in Los Angeles.

For one, Bryant is one of the best offensive players ever to play in the NBA. He racked up 33,643 regular-season points during his pro career, which ranks fourth all time. Two all-time greats in LeBron James and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, along with one of the better power forwards ever in Karl Malone, are the only three players with more points to their names.

But Bryant is also considered a Lakers legend because he won at a high level during his time with the team. The Lakers won five championships with Bryant on the squad, and all of those titles came during the 21st century.

Considering all that Bryant accomplished both individually and collectively as a Laker, one can understand why his statue is being protected while Crypto.com Arena is being renovated.