Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea says Kobe Bryant’s death “tests faith”

On January 28th, the tragic passing of NBA legend Kobe Bryant took the world by storm. A week later and tributes are still pouring in for the man’s legacy, as people still struggle to come to terms with his loss. One of those people is Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who was a contemporary of the basketball star, at sat down with ESPN to deliver a powerful statement on Bryant’s life and impact.

“I remember Kobe Bryant as a person evolving — a person always evolving. And as such an iconic fixture of the L.A. landscape, he was someone we all loved,” said Flea. “He came when he was 17 years old to the Lakers. I met him when he was 17 years old”, the bassist went on, noting Bryant’s transition into a team player and leader after playing the game perhaps a bit selfishly when he entered the league.

“Then he retires and we watch him evolve even more,” Flea went on, noting, “He’s a storyteller — he’s putting out kids’ books. He’s coaching a girls basketball team and to see him go like this is just devastating [as well as the loss of] his beautiful little girl [Gianna].”

The unexpected loss forced the Chili Peppers bassist to dig deep as he comprehended the loss, stating, “For me it’s a time of mourning. It’s been a time of a lot of prayer and it really tests faith to come to terms to understand why something like this happens.”

However, Flea took an optimistic approach to the situation, saying how it has united so many different people who all loved and appreciated the same human being.

“One of the reasons I love sports and love basketball in particular, it brings us all together — every economic class, every race, every flavour of human being — we come together because we love this beautiful thing,” the bassist said.

“It’s a craft,” Flea continued, “Basketball is an art and just like that brings us together and brings us all under this umbrella of this incredible art form that we watch people innovate and take further and further and deeper, so does Kobe’s death bring us together. And we all come together and we can all cry and we can all realize that something momentous has happened and that we will never be the same. And in this city, it will never be the same. So in his life as in his death, he brings us together and it’s togetherness and for that I express gratitude.”

Watch the full ESPN interview clip below.

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