Joe Bryant, former NBA player and father of the late Kobe Bryant, has died at the age of 69. Bryant, nicknamed “Jellybean,” starred at La Salle University for two years before an eight-year NBA career with his hometown Philadelphia 76ers, the San Diego Clippers and the Houston Rockets.
Mike Sielski of the Philadelphia Inquirer was the first to report Bryant’s death. La Salle coach Fran Dunphy told the Inquirer on Tuesday that Bryant recently suffered a stroke.
The 76ers selected Bryant with the 14th pick in the 1975 NBA Draft. After four seasons, Philadelphia traded him to San Diego for what turned out to be the first pick in the 1986 draft. In Bryant’s first game with the Clippers, and Magic Johnson’s first game in the NBA, he dunked over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Bryant played three seasons for the Clippers, who traded him to the Rockets before the 1982-83 season, his last in the league. Bryant averaged 8.7 points, 4.0 rebounds, 1.7 assists and 0.9 steals in 606 games over eight NBA seasons. After that, he played overseas for a decade — nine years in Italy, where Kobe grew up, and one year in France.
After his playing career ended, Bryant turned to coaching. He was the junior varsity coach at Lower Merion High School in Philadelphia, where Kobe played, and the girls’ team coach at Akiba Hebrew Academy, before working as an assistant coach from 1993 to 1996 at La Salle, his alma mater. Bryant stopped coaching when Kobe entered the NBA in 1996, but returned to it in the 2000s.
Bryant coached almost everywhere except the NBA: the ABA’s Las Vegas Rattlers and Boston Frenzy, three teams in Japan, two teams in Thailand. “Basketball is basketball, all over the world,” Bryant told Sports Illustrated in Bangkok in 2012. He even coached SlamBall.
Fuente: CBS Sports
2024-07-16 16:23:26
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