NBA Twitter the day Kobe Bryant died: What players and media said

TMZ broke the horrific news on a Sunday afternoon: Kobe Bryant, one of the finest basketball players in history, had died at age 41 along with his daughter Gianna and seven others in a helicopter crash.

Shock, denial, despair, and immense sadness followed. Twitter (now X) was one of the platforms where that sequence of emotions was expressed more clearly.

Here’s what NBA players and media members tweeted that day.