Tragedy struck the basketball world Sunday afternoon when it was confirmed that NBA and Los Angeles Lakers icon Kobe Bryant passed away along with his 13-year old daughter and seven others in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.

Bryant died at the age of 41, one night after a game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers saw LeBron James pass him on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.

But now, less than a day later, Bryant is gone, but his legacy of the “Mamba Mentality” and his constant commitment to the game he loved is felt across the professional and college basketball ranks, including Ames, Iowa, and Iowa State men’s basketball. 

Cyclones Coach Steve Prohm heard of the shocking news at his home while he watched film of the team’s loss to Auburn. Prohm’s brother texted him and told him of the news.

“My wife texted me from the back while she was trying to put kids down and I was like ‘man, let me check to make sure this is real’”, Prohm said.

While the death of Bryant spread and the details started to become clearer, Prohm got a call from his old college friend Roy Rogers about the news. Rogers was taken 22nd in the 1996 NBA Draft, nine picks behind Bryant and now currently is an assistant coach for the Chicago Bulls.

He called Prohm twice Sunday night to talk about what Bryant’s legacy meant to them and how surreal it was that Bryant was taken the same time as Rogers.

Prohm knows that Bryant represented the perennial NBA icon role for his players that Michael Jordan played in Prohm’s youth.

“I grew up on [Michael] Jordan and [Scottie] Pippen, they grew up on Kobe and now Steph Curry and all these guys,” Prohm said.

Take away Bryant’s future Hall-of-Fame resume, Prohm appreciated Kobe’s role as an active and loving father, as he is a father to three young children of his own.

Besides the obvious sadness he felt for Kobe, his daughter and seven others passing away, Prohm felt even more pain for Bryant’s final embrace with his daughter.

“Just watching Kobe’s interaction with his children and knowing how I feel about my children and thinking about walking out to the game every day and seeing Cass, Frances and Jackson, man just knowing in those moments what him and his daughter what their embrace was like,” Prohm said.

Tyrese Haliburton, Iowa State’s leading scorer and team leader, had the same reaction to the death of the basketball legend as his head coach, but wants to take Bryant’s legacy and move it forward into his game while he is still in a Cyclone uniform and beyond. Haliburton grew up watching Bryant and said the constant debate in his house was who was better — ‘LeBron or Kobe?’

“What Kobe would want everyone to do is learn from what he did in his lifetime, obviously it is really sad but you know, just gotta keep his legacy going however we can do that for sure,” Haliburton said.

Haliburton spent this past summer and this season watching a lot of Bryant’s highlights, trying to learn from one of basketball’s greatest players.

Bryant’s biggest impact on Haliburton came in his mindset to never have fear and not see anything as failure, but rather look at it as disappointment.

Haliburton wants to continue following Bryant’s message of chasing your dreams and keep working at what he loves.

“I was just watching a video earlier how fear worked for him where he said that we all have dreams but we are just scared to chase them because we are scared of failing but there really is no such thing as failing, for me it’s just going in and do the best at what you can do,” Haliburton said.

For Prohm, he wants Bryant’s death to become a beacon of love and respect of one another that a massive celebrity’s death like his usually generates.

He told the Cyclones over text what he wishes Bryant’s death should mean to them and what they hopefully take away from it going forward.

“I texted our team and said, ‘I wish you could live your life everyday thinking the way you do on days that tragedy happens’ because man we would all be a hell of a lot better if we could keep that focus.”