EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — Frank Vogel is a good man and a fine coach, but he was put in an impossible position Wednesday afternoon. The Los Angeles Lakers had returned to the practice floor for the first full-blown workout since the franchise was flattened with grief Sunday, when Kobe Bryant’s helicopter collided with a hill in Calabasas.

The Lakers’ first-year head coach tried to shoulder the burden as the team’s lone spokesman, and he did as well as he could do. But Vogel never coached Bryant. He wasn’t in Bryant’s orbit the way some of his players were. He only saw that raging force from an opposing sideline, when he was in Indiana. He saw it whenever Bryant would visit this year’s Lakers.

He tried. He did. He said, “We want to represent what Kobe was about more than anything.”

He said, “We always wanted to make him proud.”

He paused. Deep breath. And said, “That isn’t going to change.”

A day earlier, the players had gathered here, at their practice facility at the UCLA Health Training Center, a few blocks away from LAX, to break a sweat with a light workout, eat some lunch, share stories with each other, their first time back as a group.

LeBron James reportedly recalled in great detail the message Bryant had delivered back in 2008, at the Beijing Olympics, when he all but tortured Pau Gasol during a Spain-U.S matchup with the intention of delivering a quintessential Kobe memorandum.

The Lakers had lost to the Celtics in the NBA Finals two months earlier, in large part because Gasol had played down to his reputation as a gifted but soft big man. Nothing infuriated Kobe more than soft, especially as it pertained to a teammate he would desperately need to add to his collection of championship rings.

A year later, Kobe himself would remember: “He knows me, man. I don’t play, and for us, it was important to send that message, too. I wanted Pau to know, ‘This is what you have to be willing to do in order to win titles. This is the line that you have to cross in order to be a champion.’ ”

Not incidentally?

The Lakers won the next two titles. Gasol was Kobe’s wingman for both.

Vogel believed Tuesday’s gathering was therapeutic for the players to deal with their grief about Bryant’s passing. Though retired since 2016, he remained a looming presence over everything this franchise does. Both of his retired numbers are painted on the walls at the practice court, flanking one of the exits.

Outside on Wednesday, workers prepared to add a few more whiteboards to an already massive vigil. Thousands of fans had come here the past three days to sign boards with Bryant’s and his daughter Gianna’s faces superimposed on them. They started coming Sunday. They added an extra board Monday, another Tuesday. And another at lunchtime now.

The players may not have seen this as they reported for work Wednesday but they certainly felt them, because it is impossible to go anywhere in Southern California without feeling it. You don’t even need to be an expert eavesdropper to walk into a Starbucks, or a Jack in the Box, and not hear snippets of the same conversation.

“…I hugged my kids again last night …”

“…Magic was more electric, but give me Kobe with the ball and the last shot…”

“…the love he and his daughter had for each other…”

Vogel may not have known Bryant well, but he knows his team. He knows James and Anthony Davis shared Kobe’s rarefied air. He knows that while Dwight Howard is the only player on the LA roster who played here with Bryant, they all grew up idolizing him. And together they still have an excellent chance to do the only thing Bryant cared about: win a title.

“You can’t break this team apart, not in any way,” Vogel said. “Certainly this won’t do that. We’ve become a family in a very short time. We understand the opportunity we have this year.”

One more pause.

“He was the most feared man in the league for an entire generation,” Vogel said of Bryant. “His influence was profound, league-wide. We just want to represent what he stood for.”