Lakers news: Pau Gasol reflects on 'trance' after Kobe Bryant's death

Nearing the one-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant's passing, his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Pau Gasol took the courage to narrate his experience.

Nearing the one-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant's passing, his former Los Angeles Lakers teammate and close friend in Pau Gasol took the courage to narrate his experience after hearing the tragic news.

“You start getting in this trance where you're completely frozen,” he said via ESPN. “You're just stuck in complete shock. You can't believe it. I still for days, weeks, I still didn't want to believe it.”

Like many others, Gasol also had the belief that the Lakers legend could've found a way to get out of the accident. Unfortunately, reports eventually emerged that no one managed to make it out alive of the crashed helicopter.

“You still thought that Kobe could have gotten out of that accident by his own feet and carried his daughter — and if there were any other survivors — with him to the hospital.”

“We had that perception of him as that strong, as that invincible. If someone could have survived it, it was him.”

Although he was still in utter shock and disbelief, Gasol and his family didn't waste any time as they immediately packed their bags and headed to California to be around Kobe's wife, Vanessa, and their children.

“We just booked a flight [to California],” he said. “We decided we needed to be there and we left. We didn't know if we were leaving for a week, two weeks or a month, but we needed to be there.”

Gasol was one of the few players who were lucky enough to get to know Bryant on a deeper level. The two players spent six and a half years together with the Lakers and have won two-straight championships along the way.

Their bond eventually grew beyond mere teammates on the floor and even became close with each other's families. As one of Bryant's closest friends, Gasol simply knew that he had a responsibility to be around his former teammate's family during those trying times.