The tributes to Bryant rolled in from around the country on Sunday after the news broke that he had been killed in a helicopter crash along with his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven other people.

But the shock of Bryant’s death at 41 hit particularly hard in Southern California, where people across geographic, economic and cultural divides were united for the day — in grief.

[Read more about Kobe Bryant’s brilliant and complicated legacy in The Times’s obituary.]

Although Bryant was a global celebrity who transformed the N.B.A., fans said he always felt like a true local.

“Kobe was our king,” John Epiceno, 63, told me as he gazed at Echo Park Lake, the swan boats gliding past. “He stood for L.A.”

Mr. Epiceno showed me a Dodgers tattoo on one forearm, and a tattoo that read “Rams” on the other. On his back, he said, was his Lakers ink.