Remembering Gianna Onore-Maria Bryant
By: Wayne
While writing my Kobe memoir, I felt like I wasn’t doing justice to the memory of Gianna Bryant. I decided to write a separate article in memory of Kobe and Vanessa’s beautiful 13-year-old daughter. The only thing Kobe was more proud of than his basketball career was being a dad, and his eyes lit up when he got to talk about Gigi, particularly in the context of basketball. Kobe left the NBA to move on to pursue different things but started reappearing courtside at games because his daughter wanted to watch the young stars in the league. Cameras recently caught Kobe and Gigi at the Nets-Hawks game, where Gigi had the opportunity to watch her favorite NBA player Trae Young. She was a student of the game, and Kobe loved being her teacher as they watched some of the best young players together. Videos of the proud dad putting up shots with his daughter in what looked like their basement basketball hoop hit me hard this week. Gigi had the world at her fingertips with her dad as her mentor.
Kobe was on his way to coach his daughter’s AAU game at the Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks when the helicopter crashed. Mambacita, as Kobe affectionately referred to her, and her basketball ability brought him so much joy every day. Gigi was on the path to a professional basketball career of her own and had dreams of playing in the WNBA, something she was incredibly proud of. In one Jimmy Kimmel clip, Kobe talked about how fans would tell him “you and Vannessa have to have a boy to play in the NBA”, and Gigi would interject and say “Oy, I got this”. Gianna had Kobe’s competitive streak - he recalled a game of Candyland with a 3-year-old Gigi to the New Yorker back in 2014. Kobe said that he had one move left to make to win, and felt like if he let her win he wouldn’t be teaching her the right things. So, he made the move to win the game, and a 3-year-old Gigi knocked over the game board in frustration. “Shit, the kid’s like me,” Kobe said. She had the Mamba mentality in her from a young age.
Mambacita was even starting to prepare like her dad. “I try to watch as much film as I can,” she said in an interview with CBS’s Vegas affiliate, KLAS, before the Las Vegas Aces WNBA opener. “More information, more inspiration”, Gigi said, sounding like Kobe would before starting an NBA season of his own. Gianna’s favorite WNBA player was the Chicago Sky’s Gabby Williams; Williams and the Bryants had developed a special relationship in recent years. Williams had welcomed the Bryants to games in the past, given Gigi her jerseys, and used to FaceTime with Gigi before games of her own. Williams spoke about Gigi’s passion for basketball this week, saying “she had the right mentality, so confident, relentless, so mean and aggressive - and then walk off the court with the biggest, sweetest smile on her face, but my favorite part about her was just seeing how much she loved the game and loved to learn.” Williams gushed about Gigi’s ability and future potential, even saying “from what I saw, she was going to be heaps better than me.”
“Gigi was really turning into a special player,” said Russ Davis, the women’s basketball coach at Vanguard University in Southern California. “It’s hard to predict her future, but with the way she was improving and the way she understood the game, she was going to have a bright one.” Kobe was so incredibly proud of her. Gianna had verbally committed to UConn’s illustrious women’s team when she was just in 5th grade - it’s where Gabby Williams had played, along with some of Gigi’s other favorite WNBA stars. UConn honored Gigi’s memory by placing a jersey with her number and name on it at the end of their bench on Monday, along with bouquets of flowers. Videos of Gianna shooting turnaround, fadeaway jumpers elicited shades of her father’s game, and I have no doubt she was destined for great things, especially with Kobe in her corner. The world missed out on seeing a superstar athlete blossom into a pro but also missed out on an incredible young woman who Kobe was so proud to call his daughter. It is unthinkable the pain the remaining Bryant family is feeling as they say reconcile Kobe and Gigi being gone.
Afterword: This article and the longer Kobe memorial piece which I have published focused on the Bryant family, but I don’t want to lose sight of the other families who were devastated by this tragedy. 9 lives in total were claimed in the crash. Kobe and Gianna Bryant are survived by Vanessa Bryant (Gianna’s mother and Kobe’s wife), as well as Natalia Bryant, Bianka Bryant, Capri Bryant (Kobe and Vanessa’s remaining children); John Altobelli, the baseball coach at Orange Coast College, his wife Keri, and their daughter Alyssa, who was a teammate to Gianna, are survived by John and Keri’s son, J.J. and daughter, Lexi; Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton, teammate to Gianna and Alyssa, are survived by Chris (husband and father) as well as Chris and Sarah’s remaining sons Hayden and Riley; Christina Mauser, the assistant coach on Bryant’s Mamba Academy basketball team, is survived by her husband Matt Mauser and their three children; Arya Zobayan, the pilot of the helicopter and certified flight and ground instructor in Huntington Beach, California. The memories of those who perished in this accident live on and their families are in my thoughts and prayers at this time.
