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Remembering Black Mamba: Kobe Bryant Holds Hoops Clinic For 150 Girlsįor Vanessa and her daughters every day, not just Jan. We know Kobe was going to be great in this “second act” and if you believe what has been written, said and if you ever observed her, Gigi Bryant was her father’s daughter and destined for greatness too.
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Natalia Bryant, Bianka and Capri lost a father and sister. Vanessa Bryant lost a husband and a daughter. But he, more than any person or athlete I’ve ever met, had a keen understanding of the process and the journey as the thing that matters. The perfection comes from the imperfection and the mistakes that you make.” I asked him: Why animation to tell this story? He said, “when drawing by hand you get to see all the imperfections. He was debuting “Dear Basketball,” his love letter to the game for which he won an OSCAR the following year. We met in 2017, on the red carpet at the Tribeca Film Festival, and Kobe introduced me to his wife, Vanessa, eldest daughter Nathalia and, at the time, his middle daughter, Gianna, aka Gigi.
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What would his post career into storytelling ultimately lead to? What else could he have created? How good could Gigi have gotten at basketball? What would her future family life look like? There are so many unknowns with the premature death of Kobe and Gigi. Natalia Bryant Inspired By Late Great Dad Kobe Bryant That’s what the rudimentary realities of life and a global pandemic will do. Two years since his death, it feels both as though no time has passed and a lot of time has passed. Kobe’s playing career was from 1997-2016, so he overlapped with LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and others. For this era’s top players, he was their Michael Jordan. Players talked glowingly of the influence Kobe had on them and what he meant to them individually. Remembering Mamba Mentality: Kobe Bryant Drops 60 On The Way Out The Door NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that the All-Star game MVP award would be permanently named after the Los Angeles Lakers legend. His spirit and presence were felt in every event, media session, and, of course, during the game. The rest of that NBA season, before the COVID-19 pandemic, was a celebration and tribute to Kobe.Īll-Star weekend in Chicago was the NBA’s showcase to honor Kobe. This was the game where the video of Kobe breaking down the finer points of the game to Gigi went viral.Īs you can see, the Mamba mentality is nowhere to be found on this court tonight I was covering the Atlanta Hawks versus Brooklyn Nets game. It was surreal as I had just seen Kobe and Gigi about a month earlier at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The names started trickling in on CNN, and I reached out to contacts who were hearing the same thing. “Kobe was on that chopper and he’s dead” one message said. When the news of a helicopter crash in Calabasas flashed on a CNN crawl, I thought ‘how tragic.’Ī few moments later, details started to emerge and I started receiving text messages. It was a little past noon EST in NYC, and I was in my apartment jet lagged from a 36-hour trip to France for NBA Paris 2020. I remember where I was when the news broke. 26, 2020, when the helicopter crashed into the side of a mountain in Calabasas, California. Kobe, Gigi and seven other passengers were on board a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter headed to Ventura County for a basketball game at the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, on Jan. Photo: Getty marks the two-year anniversary of the death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi.