A month after the festive unveiling of the Kobe Bryant statue outside Crypto.com Arena, fans began to notice a few spelling errors on the statue — some more obvious than others.
The 19-foot bronze statue, inspired by Kobe’s pose after scoring 81 points in a game against Toronto in 2006, has that night’s official scorer’s report on its side.
But the list included a misspelling of at least two players’ names: instead of José Calderón, a former Toronto goalie, his name was written as “Jose Calderson.” Additionally, former Laker Vakeaton Quamar Von Wafer’s name was misspelled as “Vom Wafer”.
Perhaps most confusing is that the word “decision” was mistakenly written as “decicion”.
“Something like this, I didn’t expect it,” Laker fan Holden Moser said. “Like a statue of an obvious great player, you would think you would want to put that much work into it and make sure you don’t make any mistakes.”
While some fans suspected that the day’s scoreboard contained errors that could have led to spelling errors on the statue, it appears that the scorer’s report did not contain errors.
In 2020, Goldin Auctions auctioned the scorer’s report signed by Kobe, and it does not contain any of the three spelling mistakes.
“Well, if it’s a mistake, then it has to go,” said another Laker fan, Miguel Custodio. “Because we know Kobe and his reputation as a perfectionist and someone who wants to do things right, why would you want that?”
Now the question is: what will the Lakers do about it?
The Lakers told the Associated Press that it plans to correct the error soon.
“We have been aware of this for a few weeks and are already working to have this corrected soon,” the Lakers said in a statement.
