After the NBA, Bryant devoted himself to coaching his daughter and her friends. After his death, eight of the girls played on.
NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. — Every year they gather at the jetty here, teenage girls in matching black hoodies, their toes clinging to the edge of the rocks as the Pacific crashes into the shore below. They cling to each other, too, crying quiet tears onto each other’s shoulders as they toss eight flowers apiece into the ocean.
Three years after his death, the girls Kobe Bryant coached still feel his influence in the basketball nirvana he helped form. Eleven girls can say they were coached by Kobe Bryant. Three were on that helicopter. The remaining eight feel fortunate they were once part of his plan to build them a basketball nirvana.
“He said that he was so incredibly blessed to have such an extended family,” Allison Eadie says. “But, you know, he created that family. And because he created that family, the girls were able to continue on.” “Em,” as Emily is known, is a team captain, a steadying, reliable presence on and off the court whose play and academic performance have drawn interest from Ivy League schools. Kat, who has also drawn interest from Division I schools, stretches the floor with her range and sets the tone with her optimism. Annabelle Spotts does her work in the low block and generally maintains a stoic approach on the court. When the team needs a timely stop or shot, Zoie steps up.
Amalia remains the little sister, shy but playful. “Our fourth-grader at heart,” Annabelle calls her. She keeps the team loose with a celebratory dance after a big play while staying ready to attack the opposition with the same zeal — all as she chomps on bubble gum. On Instagram, Amalia goes by “Junior Mamba,” and she is the only member of the team who wears one of the jersey numbers Bryant once wore, donning his international No. 10.
Em, Zoie, Kat and Annabelle show up wearing their lime-green Kobe Grinches, the signature Nikes Bryant preferred for Christmas Day games. Amalia packs for a slumber party later that night at Em’s house but doesn’t get the memo for the footwear: She’s in the black-and-white Kobe 6 Mambacita shoe, with Gianna’s No. 2 near the heel.
They wake early the next morning for a 7 a.m. weight training session. Em loads them up again, cruising along the coastline as the sun crests above Sage Hill recently named Ghassemieh an assistant coach, a nod to his bond with the girls, which intensified after the crash. Ghassemieh was supposed to be on the helicopter that day, his seat taken at the last minute.
“A lot of these girls didn’t even know what the word fatalities meant,” Allison Eadie says, adding that these were “people that they had just been playing with on the court the day before.” Lene Righeimer wasn’t at the gym that morning, but embedded in her brain is the image of her daughter returning home, her eyes red and watery. “I remember seeing Kat come out of that bus like a wet cat,” she says, “I told her that no matter what, you’re going to be okay.”The Righeimers had experienced grief some 16 years earlier, when their 4-year-old daughter, Rebecca, died of a heart ailment.
“Haters are a good problem to have,” it reads. “Nobody hates the good ones. They hate the great ones.” Plus, he told her, he always had to work on Christmas. “I know you used to watch,” he told her. She smiled and replied, “I did.” The girls and their families have kept most of their memories private, declining to post pictures from team dinners or of Bryant belting out “Happy Birthday” after practice as one of the girls blew out a candle on a cupcake. Bryant once told the parents, “You can either be a friend or a fan,” his way of telling them not to exploit their relationship with a Hall of Famer for likes on Facebook or Instagram.
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