As of Tuesday morning, there was no official cause of Bryant\u2019s death disclosed. In a statement, La Salle University, Bryant\u2019s place of play and coaching, said he \u201cwas a beloved member of the Explorer family and will be dearly missed.\u201d\n

\n
Extended Period Fran Dunphy, the head coach of La Salle and a basketball coach from the Philadelphia area, revealed to the\u00a0Philadelphia Inquirer\u00a0that Bryant had suffered a severe stroke recently.\n
Following Kobe Bryant\u2019s passing in a helicopter accident more than four years ago, Joe Bryant hardly made any public appearances. In 2010, the legendary player from the Los Angeles Lakers told ESPN that Joe had\u00a0\u201ca great basketball mind\u201d\u00a0and that his father had taught him\u00a0\u201cfrom an early age how to view the game, how to prepare for the game and how to execute.\u201d\n
While traveling to a basketball event in Calabasas, California, in January 2020, a chopper carrying Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people perished. A month or so after Kobe and Gianna passed away, Joe and Pam Bryant, who had been married for almost fifty years, attended the memorial service in Los Angeles in the front row, despite their occasionally tense relationship with Kobe.\n
Kobe\u2019s widow, Vanessa Bryant, wrote on her Instagram story on Tuesday,\u00a0\u201cSending our condolences upon hearing the news of my father-in-law\u2019s passing.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWe hoped things would\u2019ve been different. Although the times we spent together were few, he was always sweet and nice to be around. Kobe loved him very much.\u201d\n
Joe Bryant was a standout player at La Salle, averaging 20.8 points per game over two seasons with the Explorers. He went on to play professionally both in the United States and abroad. The Golden State Warriors selected him in the first round of the 1975 NBA Draft, but the Philadelphia 76ers ultimately acquired him.\n
\u201cJoe \u2018Jellybean\u2019 Bryant was a local basketball icon, whose legacy on the court transcended his journey across Bartram High School, La Salle University, and his first four NBA seasons with the 76ers from 1975-79,\u201d\u00a0the team stated in a statement.\u00a0\u201cOur condolences go out to the Bryant family.\u201d\n
Former Kobe teammate Doug Young praised Joe as the ideal\u00a0\u201crole model.\u201d\n
\u201cJoe was our JV coach at Lower Merion and I could not have asked for a more positive mentor, teacher, and role model,\u201d\u00a0Young told ESPN.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to overstate how much he influenced me and my teammates. He made basketball fun and made us all want to be better; he believed in us. I\u2019ll never forget his infectious smile, his bear hugs and the incredible bond he shared with Kobe. Growing up in Lower Merion, there was no family we loved and admired more than the Bryants, and that started with Joe.\u201d\n
The 6-foot-9 Bryant averaged 8.7 points and 4.0 rebounds in 606 career games while playing for the Sixers, Clippers, and Rockets during portions of eight NBA seasons. He played with the Sixers in 1976\u201377, a squad that lost the NBA Finals against the Trail Blazers.\n
In 1992, Bryant began working as a coach after spending over ten years playing abroad in France and Italy. In addition to serving in a variety of coaching capacities at the professional and collegiate levels in the United States, Japan, and Thailand, he spent portions of three seasons as the head coach of the WNBA\u2019s Los Angeles Sparks.\n
Arn Tellem, the vice chairman of the Pistons and formerly Kobe Bryant\u2019s agent, expressed his deep sadness over the passing of Joe \u201cJellybean\u201d Bryant and joined the basketball community in mourning a true Philly hoops legend.\u00a0\u201cOur friendship opened the door for me to represent Kobe as he entered the NBA, a memory I\u2019ll always cherish. Joe was a devoted husband, father and grandfather, whose warmth touched everyone he met.\u201d\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As of Tuesday morning, there was no official cause of Bryant\u2019s death disclosed. In a statement, La Salle University, Bryant\u2019s place of play and coaching, said he \u201cwas a beloved member of the Explorer family and will be dearly missed.\u201d Extended Period Fran Dunphy, the head coach of La Salle and a basketball coach from […]\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/momentsunfolded.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}