Joe Bryant, the father of NBA legend Kobe Bryant and a former pro basketball and coach, has died at the age of 69, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Joe, nicknamed “Jellybean” for his love of the candy, was a first-round draft pick in 1975 when he was selected 14th overall by the Golden State Warriors. While he never played for the Warriors, he spent the first four years of his professional career with his hometown Philadelphia 76ers. In total, he played eight years in the NBA before spending most of the rest of his career in Italy.

After his playing career ended, Bryant returned to the United States and settled in the Philadelphia area, where he became an assistant for La Salle and Kobe attended Lower Merion High School. Joe coached numerous teams during his more than 20-year coaching career, including the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks on two occasions.

Joe Bryant's strained relationship with Kobe and Vanessa Bryant

While Joe Bryant had a long career in basketball, many will remember him most as the father of Kobe Bryant, who played 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. Kobe, who along with his daughter Gianna died in a helicopter crash in January 2020, had a publicly tumultuous relationship with his father Joe and mother Pamela.

In 2001, Kobe married Vanessa Laine in a ceremony that Joe and Pamela chose not to attend due to their reported assertion that Kobe should not be marrying so young or to a woman who was not Black. The marriage strained Kobe's relationship with his parents to the point that when the Lakers won the 2001 NBA Championship, Joe did not attend any of the Finals games. As a result, Kobe was pictured looking sad holding the Larry O'Brien Trophy in a now-iconic photo.

“The falling out occurred in 2000, though neither Joe nor Kobe talks about it publicly anymore,” Chris Ballard wrote for Sports Illustrated in 2012. “At 21, Kobe got engaged to 18-year-old Vanessa Laine, whom he had met on the set of a video shoot when she was a high school senior. Joe did not approve. The problem, according to the Los Angeles Times, was that Joe was ‘uncomfortable that Vanessa, a Latina, is not African-American, and he is uneasy with [Kobe's] selfless devotion to her.'

“When Kobe and Vanessa got married the following year, Joe and Pam didn't attend the wedding. When the Lakers played three games in Philadelphia during the 2001 NBA Finals, Joe was nowhere to be found. When, at the end of that series, the Lakers triumphed and Kobe was spotted holding the trophy in the shower and crying, everyone assumed it was out of joy, or relief. But he later told the Times, ‘That was about my dad.'

While Kobe and his parents reportedly reconciled after the birth of Gianna, Kobe said in 2016 that he had not spoken with his parents in three years after they attempted to auction off memorabilia from his times at Lower Merion.

“Our relationship is s–t,” Kobe told Ramnoa Shelburne. “I say [to them], ‘I'm going to buy you a very nice home, and the response is ‘That's not good enough'?” he says. “Then you're selling my s–t?”

Joe and Pamela attended Kobe's funeral in 2020 after the NBA legend, his daughter Gianna, and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.