It’s impossible to know what Bryant would have done, or who he would have become, without the allegations of sexual assault. That was the birth of the Black Mamba, but not its end. But wishing it would go away not only erases the experience of a woman it ignores something that Bryant himself at least appeared to have understood. Since his death, many people have gotten angry at those in the press and online who have brought up the assault allegation. But the service, which was broadcast on television and streamed online, was also part of the evolving narrative around Bryant and his legacy. Bryant was celebrated, appropriately, as a basketball genius beloved by millions, and as a husband, father, and friend. This was not a subject for a memorial service for Bryant and his daughter. He embraced that darkness, and fed on it. The Black Mamba was willing to be a villain. Greatness did not always allow for goodness. Bryant later said that the Black Mamba identity was a way of coping-of separating Kobe the flawed human being from Kobe the ruthless basketball assassin. Several of his sponsors at the time dropped him, and many basketball fans, especially those outside of Los Angeles, turned against him. The criminal case was dropped after the accuser declined to testify she filed a civil suit, which was settled, with Bryant issuing an apology but not admitting guilt. He had come to know Taurasi at the 2008 Olympics, and had dubbed her “the White Mamba,” a play on his own self-coined nickname, “the Black Mamba.” Kimmel joked, when introducing her, that Bryant had given Taurasi his highest compliment: he had named her after himself.īryant adopted that nickname in the aftermath of being accused, in 2003, of sexually assaulting a nineteen-year-old in a Colorado hotel room shortly before his twenty-fifth birthday. Bryant had asked Ionescu to mentor Gigi he had also taught Ionescu his step-back jumper and texted her advice. They were Gigi’s idols, but they were there for Kobe, too. She also asked three people who should be far more famous than they are: Sabrina Ionescu, the biggest star in college basketball Geno Auriemma, the head coach of the women’s team at the University of Connecticut, where Gigi had dreamed of playing and Diana Taurasi, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Vanessa Bryant, Kobe’s wife and Gigi’s mother, asked Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and Rob Pelinka-Bryant’s former agent and Gigi’s godfather-to speak. Beyoncé, wearing a gold suit and, on her hand, a giant purple gemstone, began the event with a heart-wrenching rendition of “XO.” Jimmy Kimmel served as host Alicia Keys played the “Moonlight” Sonata. On Monday, more than twenty thousand people attended a public memorial service for Kobe and Gigi Bryant at the Staples Center. As tragic as his death was, it was far more so because he was not alone. But in death he was remembered as a father. In life Bryant was known for a relentless and often solitary drive for greatness. 2, Gigi’s number on the Mamba Sports Academy team, which Bryant coached. At the All-Star Game, last weekend, the players on one team wore Bryant’s old number, 24, and those on the other wore No. One was even painted not far from my house, outside Boston: Celtics country. Dozens of murals appeared around Los Angeles. In Metro Manila, in the Philippines, artists transformed the surface of the iconic Tenement Court into a black-and-white painting of Bryant with Gigi in his arms. There was a massive makeshift memorial at the Staples Center, where Bryant played for the Los Angeles Lakers. There were pilgrimages to the crash site, in the hills of Calabasas, California. As soon as people knew that Kobe Bryant and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Gianna (“Gigi”), had died in a helicopter crash, on January 26th, along with seven other people, the tributes began.
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