Vanessa Bryant wants to hold the many mementos and tributes left at the Staples Center by fans of her late husband, Kobe Bryant, and daughter, Gianna, close to her heart.
Lee Zeidman, the president of Staples Center, L.A. Live and Microsoft Theater, told the Los Angeles Times that Kobe’s widow has asked to keep most of the items left outside the home of the Los Angeles Lakers following the tragic deaths of the NBA legend and their 13-year-old daughter.
“It will have been a week. We have contractually obligated events that are moving in,” he said. “Vanessa had reached out to us and said, ‘Our family would like the items out there.’ So we’re going to catalog every one of them. By that I mean, T-shirts, letters, basketballs, stuffed animals, toys. We’re going to put those in specially made containers and we’re going to ship them to the family.”
Meanwhile, anything left over will be composted and spread around the city, an idea that Zeidman said they got from England’s Manchester Arena, which did the same following the 2017 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert.
“So we’re going to compost all those flowers out there and spread them around the plants in and around L.A. Live and in and around Staples Center,” he told the publication.
“So that means that all those fans that took the time to buy the flowers and plants and brought them down there, some of that will still be around the site.”
Adding, “Our goal is to somehow have it cleaned up as we relate to the middle of next week and we’re asking people — we’re going to put signage all around LA Live and Staples Center — if you still feel the need to do something, you can certainly come down here. But we hope that you wouldn’t bring any gift and flowers, but that you donate to the Mamba Foundations that they’ve already set up. Then we try to get back to whatever normalcy is around the campus.”
The Los Angeles Lakers paid tribute to the team’s legendary player and the eight other victims, including Gianna, who lost their lives in the deadly helicopter crash on Sunday.
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