The entire basketball world stopped on Jan. 26, 2020. News broke that Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi Bryant died in a helicopter crash along with seven other people.
It has been four years since the tragedy, and yet, it still doesn’t feel real sometimes. I remember watching the 2009 and 2010 NBA Finals in back-to-back years. Seeing Kobe, Pau Gasol and the rest of the squad celebrating made my childhood as a Laker fan.
I specifically remember the 2010 Finals, in which forward Ron Artest hit the biggest three of game seven versus the Boston Celtics with just over a minute remaining. Artest’s three completed the 3-2 series comeback, and Kobe took home Finals MVP for the second straight year.
NBA fans will continue to remember his legacy and all of the awards he achieved. People still talk about Kobe’s 81-point game against the Toronto Raptors today. Fans still talk about his last basketball game, where he dropped 60 points against the Utah Jazz.
Former NBA players like Dwyane Wade, Iman Shumpert, Stephen Jackson and more have countless stories to tell about Kobe Bryant and his on-court dominance and insane work ethic.
Gigi, like her father, fell in love with basketball. Her work ethic resembled Kobe’s, and many basketball fans who watched her grow up were excited to see the good things she would accomplish.
“The best thing that happens when we go out, fans will come up to me, and she’ll be standing next to me, and they’ll be like, ‘Hey, you gotta have a boy! You and Vanessa gotta have a boy to have somebody to carry on the tradition and the legacy.’ She’s like, ‘Hey, I got this! You don’t need a boy for that.’ And I’m like, ‘That’s right! You do. You got this,’” Kobe Bryant said in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in 2019.
Kobe Bryant recalled a story where Gigi’s middle school team lost a game 22-21, a year later they beat that exact same team 115-27 with Gigi at the helm.
The date Feb. 8, 2024 holds so much weight because Gigi wore No. 2 on her basketball team while Kobe donned the numbers eight and 24 during his playing career.
We will remember these accomplishments about Kobe Bryant and his daughter on Feb. 8, 2024. A career that was jam-packed with titles, scoring records and awards. Kobe’s legacy will forever be engraved into every NBA fan — old, current or new.
