From a keepsake to a No. 8 tribute, Kobe Bryant’s legacy endures with these Sixers five years after his death

First, Nick Nurse needed to wait for the NBA to determine if the Toronto Raptors and San Antonio Spurs would play their game scheduled for the night of Jan. 26, 2020.

Then, his team decided to come up with a way to honor Kobe Bryant in the hours following his shocking death.

“I just went over and told ‘Pop’ [Spurs coach Gregg Popovich] before the game that we were going to hold the ball 24 seconds,” Nurse recently recalled of the reference to Bryant’s jersey number. “He decided to do it, too.”

» READ MORE: Kobe Bryant’s Philadelphia years revisited in CNN documentary five years after his death

On Sunday, it will be five years since the helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., took Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others traveling to a club girls basketball game. Bryant has an obvious (and sometimes complicated) connection to Philly, where he was born and then became an elite preps-to-pros prospect at Lower Merion High School before becoming an NBA legend on the floor and mentor and basketball ambassador off it.

His impact lives on in current members of the Sixers. Guerschon Yabusele was once a French kid watching Kobe YouTube highlights an ocean away. As a young coach, Nurse once sat next to Bryant while watching a practice shortly after Phil Jackson took over as coach of the Lakers. Joel Embiid models his special off-the-dribble game after Bryant. KJ Martin’s most prized possession comes from Bryant. And Paul George now wears No. 8 in Bryant’s honor.

Here are some of their personal stories:

A morbid-yet-relevant topic in recent days among people with Los Angeles ties: Which irreplaceable belongings from your home would you make sure to save if you needed to evacuate due to the fires that have tragically ravaged large swaths of the city?

Martin has an obvious answer: his signed game-worn Bryant shoes that he received as a young kid when the Los Angeles Lakers played his father, Kenyon, and the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference finals.

“That’s probably the most valuable thing I have,” Martin told The Inquirer Tuesday morning, coincidentally from Denver’s Ball Arena.

Martin is too young to remember when his father’s New Jersey Nets faced the Lakers in the 2002 NBA Finals. But when the family moved to Denver and KJ also began to love basketball, he gravitated toward the fierce competitiveness — and mutual respect for each other — that Bryant and his father embodied.

» READ MORE: Joe Bryant’s death, like Kobe’s, brought heartbreak to their friend and confidant Sonny Vaccaro

As a kid growing up immersed in the league, Bryant became “the only NBA player I was dying to meet,” Martin said. As Bryant signed his signature shoes — which are white with black Nike swooshes, plus Laker-purple laces, trim, and speckles — KJ said Bryant offered a message of, “Keep going. You’re going to be here one day.”

Bryant was correct, but he never got to see the younger Martin play as a professional.

The Martins eventually settled in Los Angeles. KJ recalls working out at the Mamba Sports Academy, where the Bryants were heading the day of the accident. When the news of Bryant’s death left Kenyon in disbelief, KJ said his dad got in his car and drove around the corner to see the wreckage aftermath in person. At the time, KJ was away at athletic powerhouse IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., but came home once the COVID-19 pandemic hit and saw the countless tributes pop up around the city.

“In L.A., his energy is still there,” Martin said, “and will always be there.”

And KJ will keep those game-worn shoes forever.

“I always kind of look at and think about his legacy and how he impacted me,” Martin said. “And not just me — other people on my team, other people around the world.”

When Yabusele began shifting from soccer to basketball while growing up in Dreux, France, his initial introduction to the NBA was through YouTube clips.

And when a Bryant buzzer-beater popped up in his feed, a young Yabusele was hooked.

“Every move that he makes, it’s just beautiful basketball,” Yabusele said following Thursday’s Sixers practice. “I was really motivated by that.”

Watching Bryant highlights became an everyday pastime for Yabusele, and how he “fell in love with the game.” He would go outside and attempt to recreate Bryant’s signature moves, even as a big man.

“[Coaches] were looking at me like, ‘What is he doing?’” the 6-foot-8, 265-pound Yabusele told The Inquirer in November.

» READ MORE: A legend’s greatest coup: How the late Jerry West made Kobe Bryant a Laker

When it was time to focus on skills more pertinent to his budding professional potential, Yabusele jokingly acknowledged it was “hard for me to let go” of his play-like-Kobe dreams. But Yabusele could still pull plenty from Bryant’s relentless work ethic and “Mamba Mentality,” which has helped fuel his road back to the NBA and status as arguably the most pleasant surprise of the Sixers’ season.

“Not even just [as a] basketball player,” Yabusele said, “in every sport, anything you’ve got going on, you can have a little bit of that mentality. He helps a lot of athletes. For me, it was just following that and telling me that, if I worked, I’ll get stuff done.”

When George chose to sign with the Sixers last summer, he needed a new jersey number.

The previous digits — 24 and 13 — he had worn in the NBA are retired by the organization. During conversations with family and friends about possible alternatives, it “kind of just dawned and clicked on me”: How about No. 8?

“What other place to represent Kobe Bryant than Philadelphia?” George said to The Inquirer earlier this week.

As a basketball-loving Southern California kid, George had an obvious idol in Bryant. It was thrilling for George, now a perennial All-Star, to play against Bryant throughout the first six seasons of his NBA career, including on Bryant’s retirement tour in 2015-16.

» READ MORE: Sultan Shabazz thought he’d be Kobe at Lower Merion before Kobe. This is his wild and uplifting story.

Those on-court matchups turned into postgame locker-room conversations. Then to George feeling comfortable enough to reach out “during a tough playoff stretch and series, where I needed input and advice.”

But the most meaningful interaction, George said, was when Bryant asked him to work a basketball camp. They sat on the sideline and talked about life. About being a girl dad. About George’s future after basketball.

“That was a special moment for me,” George said. “It started off as basketball, but as we got to sit down, it was deeper conversations.”

George knows he is one of several current and former NBA players with similar stories. They all represent Bryant’s evolution from a tenacious competitor to giving mentor, George said. And George is grateful that the “invisible bond” with Bryant as a child turned into a tangible one.

“We were just scratching the surface on what that relationship was and could have become,” George said. “So it was a tough time for me, [like] everyone, to lose him. … Had he not been ready to take that next step to help the next generation, none of us would be able to share these conversations and share his legacy of what he meant for us.

“Just grateful that he was in the place to want to help, and knowing how big he was, and using his awesomeness to spread to the next generation.”