Kobe Bryant, the former Los Angeles Lakers superstar and one of the greatest players in National Basketball Association history, died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. He was 41 years old.

Mr. Bryant, who commuted to Lakers games from his Orange County home by helicopter during his playing career, was among the dead after a copter with eight others on the flight manifest caught fire after crashing into the hills of Calabasas, Calif.

Gianna “Gigi” Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, was also killed in the crash. Gianna was a budding basketball star herself, and Mr. Bryant often shared photos and videos of her with millions of followers on social media. He called her “Mambacita”—a nod to the nickname he once gave himself, “Black Mamba.”

On a morning with foggy conditions in the Los Angeles area, the Los Angeles County Fire Department received the first report of a possible helicopter crash and brush fire at 9:47 a.m., said Daryl Osby, chief of the department. A helicopter was used to lower a paramedic near the site of the Sikorsky S-76B wreckage. He said everyone on board, including the unnamed pilot, “was determined to be perished.”

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash, a spokesperson for the FAA said.

Mr. Bryant held a singular place in NBA lore. In more than two decades with the Lakers, the only team for which he played in the league, he was a relentless, intense competitor who won five championships and became the biggest superstar of his generation.

The league’s former most valuable player once scored 81 points in one game and scored 33,643 points in his career, the third-most of all time until Saturday night, when he was surpassed by LeBron James and offered his congratulations on social media.

“Keep growing the game and charting the path for the next,” Mr. Bryant wrote on Instagram hours before his death.

His legacy was tarnished by a 2003 sexual-assault accusation that had received renewed attention in recent years in light of the #MeToo movement. Mr. Bryant was accused of raping a 19-year-old woman in a Colorado hotel room and charged with felony sexual assault. He acknowledged a sexual encounter but said it was consensual. The charges were dropped after the woman said she didn’t want to testify. Mr. Bryant apologized to the woman in 2004 and later settled a civil lawsuit connected with the case.

Mr. Bryant’s death rocked the world of sports, devastated the NBA and reverberated around the world.

The league’s grieving players, many of whom idolized Mr. Bryant after watching him as children, tweeted condolences and choked back tears when they met with reporters before their Sunday games, which went on as scheduled.

Hundreds of mourners gathered outside Staples Center in Los Angeles, and the New York Knicks lighted Madison Square Garden’s ceiling in Lakers purple and gold. At the start of a game between the Toronto Raptors and San Antonio Spurs, both teams took 24-second shot-clock violations to honor Mr. Bryant’s No. 24.

The Lakers are scheduled to play their next game on Tuesday against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Mr. Bryant took a helicopter from his Newport Beach home to Staples Center in Los Angeles during his playing career to avoid traffic and not exacerbate the pain that he tolerated after enduring numerous injuries.

In the past two decades in the U.S., federal aviation officials have focused on enhancing the safety of helicopters used in air tours and emergency-medical transportation. Poor visibility and flights in stormy conditions are considered among the biggest risk factors for helicopters.

Helicopter manufacturers and operators have tried for years, with limited success, to reduce the overall nationwide fatal accident rate for commercial and private helicopters. Improved data collection about incidents and greater use of flight simulators to train pilots have been some of the main strategies. But the rate has stayed stubbornly high.

Safety experts say primary causes of chopper crashes include pilot disorientation from flying into unexpectedly poor weather and reluctance of some flight crews to quickly land at the first hint of weather or mechanical problems. Despite high-level attention from industry leaders and regulators, however, the overall U.S. crash rate for all registered U.S. choppers has averaged roughly 120 annually for a number of years. The fatal crash rate, which is the statistical measure most closely watched by safety experts, in 2017 dropped to around one fatal accident per 200,000 flight hours, according to FAA statistics. But it climbed the next two years to end more than 20% higher last year.

In the hours after TMZ’s first report of the crash involving Mr. Bryant, tributes poured in from sports celebrities, Hollywood celebrities and U.S. politicians. Michael Jordan called him “like a little brother to me” and said that “words can’t describe the pain I’m feeling.” Jerry West, whose silhouette is the NBA’s logo, said “he has left the world a better place.” President Trump said in a tweet that it was “terrible news!” and former President Obama called it an “unthinkable day.”

“Kobe was a legend on the court and just getting started in what would have been just as meaningful a second act,” he said in a tweet. “To lose Gianna is even more heartbreaking to us as parents.”

Mr. Bryant “showed us what is possible when remarkable talent blends with an absolute devotion to winning,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “But he will be remembered most for inspiring people around the world to pick up a basketball and compete to the very best of their ability. He was generous with the wisdom he acquired and saw it as his mission to share it with future generations of players, taking special delight in passing down his love of the game to Gianna.”

Kobe Bean Bryant was a force long before the entire world came to see him that way. Born in Philadelphia and named after the Japanese beef and “Jellybean,” the nickname of his father, also an NBA player, he jumped from high school to the NBA. He invited comparisons to Mr. Jordan and then exceeded the lofty expectations that were set for him when he was a teenager.

After he retired in 2016, Mr. Bryant pursued a variety of interests off the court, launching a venture-capital firm, publishing a series of young-adult fantasy novels and winning an Academy Award for an animated short film called “Dear Basketball.”

But he was an especially active participant in his daughter’s basketball career, once his was over. Ms. Bryant played for a team called Team Mamba. ESPN reported that the Bryants were headed to one of her games after their helicopter was scheduled to land.