The death of basketball great Kobe Bryant was felt as far away as China, where fans mourned his passing along with millions of others across Asia.
The 41-year-old NBA superstar was among nine people killed Sunday when a helicopter crashed into a hillside in Calabasas, California. His daughter Gianna Maria Onore Bryant, 13, also died in the crash.
Within hours of his death, Bryant's death became one of the most-searched topics on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, where he had nine million followers, compared with 15 million worldwide on Twitter.
The pinned post on his Weibo account was a short video uploaded on Friday of Bryant wishing his "dear friends in China" a happy Lunar New Year and thanking them for their support for the past year. Underneath that post, tens of thousands of fans have left tributes and messages of mourning.
"Please, don't you pass away," read the most liked comment, posted at 3:38 a.m. Beijing time, shortly after news of Bryant's death first broke.
The former Los Angeles Lakers star remained the most popular NBA star in China, even three years after his retirement in 2016, according to a 2019 report by the Mailman Group, a digital sports marketing company.
Bryant said recently that China was like his "second home."
0 Comments