Since news broke of the passing of the legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant yesterday, sports fans all over have taken to social media to encourage the NBA to change it’s logo to Bryant to honor the star.
Jamal Crawford, who last played for the Phoenix Suns, also took to Twitter requesting to have Bryant memorialized as the new logo writing, “Kobe has to be the new NBA logo….”
Larry Nance Jr, of the Cleveland Cavaliers, responded, “All In for this,” to Crawford’s tweet.
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However, a petition had already been started and was gaining more and more signatures by the second.
The petition, which was created on Change.org, was created by a user under the name Nick M, with the headline stating, “Petition to make Kobe Bryant the new NBA Logo.”
For the description of the petition, Nick writes, “With the untimely and unexpected passing of the great Kobe Bryant, please sign this petition in an attempt to immortalize him forever as the new NBA Logo.“
Nick insists he had no idea the petition would gain this much traction writing, “The support on this petition has been out of this WORLD. I want to deeply thank everybody who contributed through signing and donating to the petition. When I started this, I didn’t expect much to come out of it, my goal was 100 signatures at best. We are now at 16,000! I hope with our effort that our dream does come true, and we are able to see Kobe Bryant engraved into the NBA Logo. Let’s continue to spread this petition out! And as Kobe would’ve said, “Mamba out.””
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A day later, the petition is sitting at over 850k signatures, which is constantly growing with each given second.
According to CBS Sports, the current NBA logo showcases a silhouette of former Lakers player Jerry West who in an interview with ESPN’s ‘The Jump’ in 2017, insisted that he doesn’t mind if it’s changed stating, “I wish that it had never gotten out that I’m the logo, I really do. I’ve said it more than once, and it’s flattering if that’s me, and I know it is me, but it is flattering.”
He continued by stating, “I don’t like to do anything to call attention to myself … that’s just not who I am, period. If they would want to change it, I wish they would. In many ways, I wish they would.”
