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Making a public monument out of bronze requires a combination of art in capturing a person’s likeness and science when it comes to casting the material. In the case of a new statue honoring Kobe Bryant, the process should have also involved a spell-check.
The Los Angeles Lakers recently acknowledged multiple spelling errors on the marble base of the 19-foot statue, which was unveiled outside the city’s Crypto.com Arena on February 8.
The errors on the statue include the misspelling of Toronto guard José Calderón as “Jose Calderson” and former Laker Von Wafer as “Vom Wafer,” according to NBC Los Angeles. The word “decision” is also misspelled as “decicion.”
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The errors went viral after German basketball journalist André Voigt posted about them on the social media platform X on March 10.
“We have been aware of this for a few weeks and are already working to get it corrected soon,” a Lakers spokesperson said in a statement Monday to NBC News and NPR News.
The statue features Bryant wearing his No. 8 jersey and posed with his right index finger in the air, inspired by the late player’s postgame response to the Lakers’ 122-104 win against the Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006. Bryant scored 81 points that night, the second-highest number ever by a single player in an NBA game.
In a press conference last month, Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, said the bronze statue next to the Crypto.com arena is one of three commissioned in her late husband’s honor. According to NBC News, the other two will be of Bryant in his No. 24 jersey and one of Bryant with his daughter Gianna, who was also onboard in the fatal helicopter crash on January 2020.
Other notable American memorials with errors include the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., first unveiled in 2011, which critics said had an inscribed quote taken out of context, altering its meaning. Meanwhile, more than 100 service members’ names were misspelled on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., erected in 1982, and a 20-foot-tall bronze statue of Hecuba at the University of Southern California in 2017 misattributed a Hamlet verse to “Shakespear.” At the time, the university told the Los Angeles Times that the spelling was intentional, however, citing 20 variations published over time.
