Outside the Los Angeles Lakers’ stadium, there’s a statue of legendary guard Kobe Bryant. In 2027, the man who helped lead Bryant to five NBA championships will get his own statue outside the arena.
The Lakers will honor Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson with a statue of his own outside Crypto.com Arena during the upcoming season, the team announced.
The statue will be unveiled April 9, 2027, before the team takes on the Minnesota Timberwolves.
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Jackson’s resume as a coach is unmatched. Over his 20 seasons in the role, Jackson won 11 times — six with the Chicago Bulls and five with the Los Angeles Lakers. When he retired after the 2010-11 NBA season, Jackson owned the highest winning percentage of any coach, coming in at .704. That figure has since been passed by Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla, who has a .726 winning percentage over five seasons. Jackson, however, maintained a 70 percent winning percentage over a much longer period.
Jackson also won two championships as a player, was the 1996 NBA coach of the year and was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.
Jackson and Bryant are far from the only members of the Lakers to get their own statue outside Crypto.com Arena. Magic Johnson, Chick Hearn, Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O’Neal, Elgin Baylor and Pat Riley are all honored at the arena. Additional Los Angeles athletes such as Wayne Gretzky and Oscar De La Hoya also have statues outside Crypto.com Arena. The team also put up a memorial dedicated to Bryant and his daughter Gianna following their deaths in 2020.
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