Gregg Popovich Calls Kobe Bryant A Superhero That Was Human

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was very familiar with Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers and the Spurs met six times in the playoffs between 1999 and 2013, with each team winning three of those series.

They had a huge amount of mutual respect for one another, with Popovich saying in 2016 that he used to see Bryant in his dreams, and Bryant saying that he used to stay up all night thinking of how to get past the Spurs' defense.

On Tuesday, a little over a week after Bryant was killed in a helicopter crash along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven other people, Popovich reflected on the the five-time NBA champion before playing the Lakers at Staples Center.

"There's a lot of years that we watched Kobe," Popovich said. "A lot of competitiveness, playing against him, coaching against him, being with him at All-Star games. I think everybody has situations where even if they didn't know him at all, they feel like they did, especially the people in Los Angeles.

"We all have those thoughts that pass by when you lose someone and they keep coming. It's going to take a while for them to stop. And the better you knew him, the more you think about the times that you did have with him, the things that you talked about. He was special to all of us in different ways."

Bryant, 41, died as he was heading to the Mamba Sports Academy, where he was going to coach Gianna in a game.

"The tragedy for the Bryant family and all the other people is something that we all learn to live with," Popovich said. "We all get lost at a certain point and everybody does the best they can to get through it. You wish for them that that process is as peaceful as possible because it's really really tough. He was like a superhero that was actually human...We kind of thought of him as one of those kinds of people."

Popovich said the accident was especially devastating because it was such a shock. Bryant had launched a new career as a storyteller after retiring in 2016 and was just getting started in his new life.

"If somebody is sick for a long time, you expect it," Popovich said. "You deal with that. But when somebody's taken the way he and his daughter and the other people were taken, that makes it a tragedy and more painful in some ways."