Doting on her daughters! Vanessa Bryant has been gushing about her and Kobe Bryant’s girls following his and their daughter Gianna’s tragic helicopter crash in January 2020.
The basketball legend died at the age of 41, along with his 13-year-old, while traveling to a Mamba Sports Academy game in Thousand Oaks, California.
Vanessa shared a sweet tribute to her late husband in February 2020 with a throwback photo of the NBA player. “#mybestfriend #theBestdaddy Miss you so much,” she wrote at the time. “#handsome #sweet #funny #silly #lovinghusband. Miss you saying, ‘Bonjourno principessa/reina.’”
The California native gave birth to her and Kobe’s first daughter, Natalia, in 2003. The pair went on to welcome Gianna three years later, followed by Bianka in 2016 and Capri in 2019.
Vanessa wanted to have “a boy more than” the Los Angeles Lakers player, he told Extra in March 2019. “I love having girls — I’m super, super excited about that,” Kobe said at the time. “She is as well. She wanted a boy so he can be mama’s boy forever — that sort of thing. We’ll see if I can deliver, I don’t know. She’s like, ‘You go see if you can hit a clutch shot. You gave me all girls, let’s see if you can bring a boy!’ Nope, not yet. We’ll see.”
The Philadelphia native told Jimmy Kimmel in October 2018 that Gianna wanted to continue his legacy on the basketball court and had WNBA dreams.
In October 2019, he gushed to The Los Angeles Times about his athletic daughter’s “curiosity on the court.” He said that Gianna was “something else,” explaining, “Even in a heated situation in a game where it’s going back and forth, she can detach herself and come to me and ask a very specific question, which is not common. She’ll come over and say, ‘OK, on this particular trap when I’m trying to close the gap but she’s getting on the outside, do I need to change my angle?’ It’s a very specific question. That’s pretty damn cool.”
The Mamba Mentality author wed Vanessa in 2001. Keep scrolling to see her sweetest motherhood moments following his death, from family photos to Gianna tributes.