LOS ANGELES • Kobe Bryant called his daughter Gianna "Mambacita" after his own court nickname "Black Mamba", confident she would follow in his footsteps and become a professional basketball player.
On Sunday, the 41-year-old National Basketball Association (NBA) legend died with his 13-year-old daughter and seven others in a helicopter crash north-west of Los Angeles as they pursued that dream.
Bryant and Gianna - or "Gigi" - were killed travelling to his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, California, where the Ventura County Star reported that he was to coach her team in a tournament.
Since he retired from the NBA in 2016, Bryant had been coaching Gianna's middle-school basketball team. In a Jan 15 Instagram post, he had a clip of Gianna playing the sport. "Gigi getting better every day #teammamba #mambacita #fade," he wrote. In a November video he posted on Instagram, she finishes a solo dribble by scoring the kind of fadeaway "swish" basket known as a "Kobe" after her father's signature shot.
In 2018, Bryant revealed his daughter was "hell bent" on playing for the University of Connecticut Huskies, one of the top teams in women's college basketball. "She watches their interviews, watches how they play and learns - not just in wins, but in tough losses, how they conduct themselves," he told the Hartford Courant. "It's great, as a parent, to be able to see my daughter pull inspiration from them."
The next step for Gianna after college would have been the Women's National Basketball Association, following in the footsteps of her grandfather, Joe Bryant, who played in the NBA before coaching the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks.
Kobe Bryant told late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel in 2018 that when fans came up to him and Gianna and said he had to have a boy to carry on his legacy, Gianna would say, "Oi! I've got this!" and he would say, "Yes, that's right, you got this".
In Bryant's last public appearance on Dec 21, he shared courtside analysis with Gianna at a game between the Atlanta Hawks and the Brooklyn Nets in Brooklyn.
Basketball fans on Sunday recognised the loss of a legend as well as a teenager with the potential to become a star in her own right.
Former US president Barack Obama, a father to two daughters, tweeted: "To lose Gianna is even more heartbreaking to us as parents."
REUTERS, NYTIMES
