Kobe Bryant returned to basketball because of his daughter, Gigi

Kobe walked away from the game he loved after retirement in 2016. In a recent interview, he revealed there’s only one reason he went back to it.

Kobe and Gigi at the championship parade in 2009. Picture: Jae C Hong/AP

Kobe Bryant had just won an NBA championship but the thing he was most proud of was hanging off his left hip.

There he stood at the victory parade in Los Angeles surrounded by thousands of screaming Lakers fans.

He was all smiles.

The 18-time NBA All-Star and his daughter Gigi at the 2009 NBA championship parade. Picture: Jae C Hong/AP

It was a rare public moment in the relationship between Kobe and his daughter Gianna – or Gigi – which played out lovingly behind the scenes back then.

But in more recent times they were always spotted together. Mostly, on the sidelines at Staples Centre where Bryant won five championships and where his jersey hangs in the rafters.

Cameras routinely captured Gigi listening intently as her dad described in detail the finer points of the game. She could not have had a better teacher or a better father.

The fact that they were at the games had everything to do with Gigi.

Bryant recently confessed that she was the only reason he went back to Staples Centre after turning away from the sport following his retirement in 2016.

“You know what’s funny,” Bryant told the Showtime Basketball podcast All the Smoke earlier this month.

“Before Gigi got into basketball I hardly watched it, but now that’s she’s into basketball, we watch every night.”

Kobe and Gigi Bryant. Picture: Chris Carlson/AP

Gigi inherited more than just her father’s love of the game – she was also really, really good.

She knew it and Bryant embraced it. It’s why he established the Mamba Academy, and it’s why he coached her high school team the last two years.

Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel in 2018, Bryant explained how he had inadvertently passed the flame to his youngest daughter.

“She does, for sure,” he said of her desire to compete in the best league in the world, the WNBA.

“The best thing that happens is when we go out and fans will come up to me and she’ll be next to me and they’ll be like, ‘You gotta have a boy, you and (Vanessa) gotta have a boy, man, somebody to carry on the tradition and the legacy’. And she’s like, ‘Oi, I got this, you don’t need no boy for that’. That’s right. Yes you do. You got this,” Bryant said.

That proud dad persona was obvious to everybody who saw them together or got the chance to speak to the Hall of Famer.

Gigi sits on the shoulders of her father, Kobe. Picture: Lenni Ignelzi/AP

ESPN reporter Rachel Nichols had to hold back tears today when remembering a moment she shared with Bryant.

“The way he loved being on the court with (Gigi and his first daughter Natalia, 17), talking with people like me, bragging about them, and teaching them the game and sharing that part of his love with them,” she said.

“That was Kobe Bryant these days. He was somebody who loved his kids and loved the world and what was open to him for it.”

When the helicopter crashed today killing Bryant, Gigi and seven others, they were travelling to a basketball game, doing what they loved doing together.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said eight passengers and their pilot were killed when the helicopter crashed in foggy conditions in the Los Angeles suburb of Calabasas.

Kobe Bryant was 41. Gigi Bryant was 13.

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Originally published as Kobe Bryant returned to basketball because of his daughter, Gigi