Vanessa Bryant a portrait of courage as she delivers powerful speech at Kobe and Gianna's memorial
Vanessa Bryant took a deep breath, clutched a white tissue in her right hand and delivered what had to be the most heartbreaking act of courage to be witnessed at Staples Center or any other sports arena in recent memory.
Vanessa was 18 when she married Kobe Bryant and 37 when she buried him. She never expected to be standing at center court addressing a packed crowd. She is not a basketball star, a Hollywood performer or a coach or general manager like the rest of those who spoke Monday at the memorial service for the former NBA great and their 13-year-old daughter, Gianna.
Vanessa is a mother and a wife, someone who has spent a good portion of her life standing on the sidelines cheering on her husband and their four daughters. And now, a little less than a month after the helicopter crash that killed Kobe, Gianna and seven others, she found herself in a place no one ever expects or wants to be.
And so, with 20,000 fans gently cheering her on, Vanessa spoke publicly for the first time since the tragedy. In a program that included musical tributes by Beyonce, Alicia Keys and Christina Aguilera, as well as speeches by Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal, Vanessa delivered the most powerful performance of the day.
Starting with Gianna — or Gigi, as she was called — Vanessa called her the apple of her eye. She talked about how her daughter liked to bake, was a loving child and was determined to be a WNBA star someday.
“Gigi would’ve most likely become the best player in the WNBA,” she said. “She would’ve made a huge difference for women’s basketball. Gigi was motivated to change the way everyone viewed women in sports. She wrote papers in school defending women and wrote about how the unequal pay difference for the NBA and WNBA leagues wasn’t fair. And I truly feel she made positive change for the WNBA players now, because they knew Gigi’s goal was to eventually play in the WNBA.”
Vanessa then spoke about Kobe, whom she met while on the set of a music video when she still was in high school.
“I couldn’t see him as a celebrity, nor just an incredible basketball player,” she said. “He was my sweet husband and the beautiful father of our children. He was my — he was my everything. We really had an amazing love story. We loved each other with our whole beings, two perfectly imperfect people raising a beautiful family and our sweet and amazing girls.”
Vanessa, repeatedly pausing to wipe tears away, painted a powerful portrait of Bryant as a parent, calling him “the MVP of girl dads.” She talked about his devotion as a father, describing how he shared a particular closeness with Gigi because of their shared love of basketball.
Bryant had become a huge advocate of women’s basketball in his retirement. He made a point of introducing his daughter to the top figures in the women’s game. Three of them — UConn coach Geno Auriemma, Oregon point guard Sabrina Ionescu and WNBA great Diana Taurasi — spoke at the memorial service.
Their inclusion along with three representatives from the NBA — O’Neal, Jordan and Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka — underscored a message about Bryant’s feelings about the need to view the women’s and men’s game through equal lenses.
“If I represented the present of the women’s game,” Ionescu said, “Gigi was the future, and Kobe knew it.”
Kobe was the coach of his daughter’s team. The two of them were traveling with teammates and their parents to a basketball game when their helicopter crashed.
“God knew they couldn’t be on this earth without each other,” Vanessa said. “He had to bring them home to have them together. Babe, you take care of our Gigi. I got Nati, BiBi and Coco, and we’re still the best team.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
