Kobe Bryant was taking the steps to make sure his daughter would carry on his basketball legacy in the weeks leading up to their tragic death.
According to reports, the NBA legend filed paperwork to trademark Gianna Bryant’s nickname “Mambacita” for her own sports brand less than a month ago.
As fans know, the 13-year-old, who was also known as Gigi, had a promising career on the court ahead of her, and her famous father was her biggest fan. On December 30, he filed paperwork to put “Mambacita” on sports shirts, shorts, hats, jerseys, sweatpants, sweatshirts, and hoodies.
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Kobe regularly called Gigi by the name Mambacita — a nod to his nickname, The Black Mamba — on social media when sharing clips of her basketball games. Tragically, one of these videos shows the teen facing off against another girl who was killed in Sunday’s helicopter crash.
As we reported, the father-daughter duo died on Sunday in a helicopter crash that also killed two of Gigi’s friends, their parents, and the pilot. They were heading from Newport Beach, where the sports icon lives, to his basketball academy in Thousand Oaks when their aircraft collided into a hillside in Calabasas.
The others lost in the crash were John Altobelli, his wife, Keri, and daughter, Alyssa, who played on the same basketball team as Bryant’s daughter, coach Christina Mauser, Payton Chester and her mother Sarah, and pilot Ara Zobayan.
Related: Shaquille O’Neal’s Son Shares Text Kobe Sent Him The Morning Of Crash
Officials are still investigating the cause of the crash, but it’s been reported that flying conditions in LA were poor at the time; there was so much fog, in fact, that the LAPD grounded its fleet of helicopters. Kobe’s pilot, however, was given a special clearance to fly under foggy conditions.
In a 2018 interview with Alex Rodriguez and Barstool Sports‘ Big Cat for The Corp podcast, Kobe revealed the reason he chose to travel by helicopter was so he wouldn’t be stuck in traffic all the time and missing out on important moments. He said:
“Traffic started getting really, really bad. I was sitting in traffic and I wound up missing like a school play because I was sitting in traffic… This thing just kept mounting, and I had to figure out a way that I could still train and focus on the craft but still not compromise family time. So that’s when I looked into helicopters and being able to get down and back in 15 minutes.”
It’s devastating to think: his solution to not miss out on life’s big moments is ultimately what led to his death.
An absolute tragedy.
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