Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, a former NBA player, WNBA coach and the father of Kobe Bryant, has died at the age of 69.
La Salle University, the school in Philadelphia where Bryant played from 1973 to 1975, confirmed the news. No cause of death was given. La Salle men’s basketball coach Fran Dunphy told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Bryant suffered a massive stroke recently.
“He was a beloved member of the Explorer family and will be dearly missed,” La Salle said in a statement.
A Philadelphia native, Bryant starred at La Salle, averaging 20.3 points and 11.1 rebounds per game across two seasons before being drafted by the Golden State Warriors with the No. 14 pick in 1975. His rights were sold to the Philadelphia 76ers later that year and he spent his first four years in the NBA in Philadelphia, averaging 8.7 points per game.
It was in Philadelphia where his third and youngest child, Kobe, was born in 1978. Bryant gave him the middle name Bean, derived from his own nickname.
Bryant overcame early career struggles, including a rookie-year arrest, to carve out a regular role with the 76ers. After his stint in Philadelphia, he played three seasons with the San Diego Clippers — averaging a career-high 11.8 points in 1981-82 — and then one season with the Houston Rockets before finishing his career internationally.
Overseas, he played with five different European teams. Kobe later credited his time in Reggio Emilia (the city of his father’s final Italian team, Reggiana) for being the place where the future Hall of Famer fell in love with basketball.
After Bryant’s playing career ended with a stint in France, he took to coaching with a job as the women’s basketball coach at Akiba Hebrew Academy in Lower Merion, Pa., the area where Kobe would later attend high school (at Lower Merion High).
Bryant left Akiba to become an assistant coach at La Salle in 1993, where he stayed until Kobe was drafted in 1996. He later returned to coaching in 2003, coaching for the next 12 years with eight different teams, including the Los Angeles Sparks on two occasions. He coached a Lisa Leslie-led 2006 Sparks team to the Western Conference finals.
His final year of coaching came in 2015 with the Rizing Zephyr Fukouka of the Japanese professional B.League.
Bryant’s relationship with his son was reportedly strained during Kobe’s career, as the Los Angeles Times reported that Kobe had a fallout with his parents and neither Joe nor Pamela, Kobe’s mother, attended their son’s wedding in 2001. After the Lakers’ championship in 2001, Kobe was famously photographed holding the trophy in the shower, a moment in which he later said he was thinking about his father.
Kobe’s death preceded his father’s by four and a half years, as the Los Angeles Lakers great died in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020.
(Photo: Stephen Dunn / Getty Images)