Kobe Bryant’s Best Quotes About Fatherhood, Raising 4 Daughters Ahead of Fatal Helicopter Crash

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Kobe Bryant's Best Quotes About Fatherhood, Raising 4 Daughters Ahead of Fatal Helicopter Crash

Family man. Kobe Bryant wasn’t just a basketball legend — the late athlete was a devoted dad and husband to his wife and four daughters. The Olympian, who died on Sunday, January 26, in a tragic helicopter crash, met his wife, Vanessa Bryant, in 1999 and married her two years later. The pair went on to welcome their eldest daughter, Natalia, in 2003, followed by Gianna three years later. Bianka and Capri arrived in 2016 and 2018, respectively. The shooting guard and his second child were on their way to a basketball game in Thousand Oaks, California, when the chopper went down in Calabasas on Sunday. Kobe coached Gianna’s Athletic Amateur Union team, and the father-daughter tragically died in the crash along with the rotorcraft’s seven other passengers. While Gianna was the only of the Philadelphia native’s daughters interested in following in his footsteps, Kobe and Vanessa worked to teach their girls “excellence” in anything they pursued. [jwplayer lmZbZHpo-l3ahXupL] As for their marriage, the couple, who met on the set of Snoop Dogg’s “Tha Eastsidaz” music video, maintained their successful relationship with “commitment” and “competitiveness,” the Wizenard Series: Training Camp creator said during a January 2020 appearance on Showtime Basketball’s All the Smoke YouTube series. (Vanessa filed for divorce from Kobe in 2011, but they reconciled two years later.) “We’ve seen couples that have been, like, 85 years old and you look and you’re like, ‘Oh man, such an old, sweet couple,’ and I’d go talk to them because I want to know,” the NBA player explained at the time. “One time a guy goes, ‘Yeah it’s great, but she just kicked me out of the bed last night, I was sleeping on the couch last two nights.’ That’s all the beauty of it: having the persistence and determination to work through things — very, very tough things — and we’ve been able to do that.” Keep scrolling to see the sweetest things that Kobe said about Natalia, Gianna, Bianka and Capri over the years. [podcast_block]

Credit: Courtesy of Kobe Bryant/Instagram

Birthday Girl

The athlete loved his daughter Natalia "beyond measure," he wrote on her 17th birthday one week prior to his death. "You will always be my little Principessa."

Credit: Courtesy of Kobe Bryant/Instagram

Grateful

"Thankful for my family," Kobe captioned a sweet Thanksgiving shot in November 2019.

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Family Man

"I have a life and I have my routine at home,” the legendary player told the Los Angeles Times in October 2019. “It’s not that I don’t want to go [to Lakers games], but I’d rather be giving [Bianka] a shower and sing Barney songs to her. I played 20 years and I missed those moments before. For me to make the trip up to Staples Center, that means I’m missing an opportunity to spend another night with my kids when I know how fast it goes. … I want to make sure the days that I’m away from them are days that I absolutely have to be. I’d rather be with them than doing anything else.”

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Curious Kid

Gianna was "something else" on the basketball court, her dad gushed to the outlet in May 2019. "What I love about Gigi is her curiosity about the game. She’s very curious. 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.”

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Baby No. 5?

Vanessa wanted to have "a boy more than" her husband did, he told Extra in March 2019, explaining, "I love having girls — I’m super, super excited about that. 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.”

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Coach Collab

"We haven't had any issues of dad-daughter sort of thing," Kobe told Entertainment Tonight of coaching Gianna in December 2018. "She's very competitive and she's a hard worker, so there haven't been any issues with that."

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Christmas Traditions

He added of their holiday favorites: "Every year, we go and watch The Nutcracker. Every single year. This year we're fortunate [because] Misty Copeland is dancing, so we're looking forward to seeing her do her thing. We also watch Home Alone, Charlie Brown, all the Christmas classics. We try to make a gingerbread house, but my wife and the kids do a much, much better job than I do! I'll put it that way."

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Legend in the Making

Gianna "for sure" wanted to play in the WNBA, he told Jimmy Kimmel in October 2018. "The best thing that happens is we’ll go out, and fans will come up to me and she’ll be standing next to me," Kobe said. "And they’ll be like, ‘Hey, you gotta have a boy. You and Vanessa gotta have a boy to carry on the tradition, the legacy. And she is like, ‘Oy, I got this. You don’t need a boy for that, I got this.’ I’m like, 'That’s right, you got this.’”

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Flying for His Girls

Kobe started frequently using helicopters in order to see his daughters more often, he explained to Alex Rodriguez and Dan "Big Cat" Katz in December 2018. "I was sitting in traffic and wound up missing, like, the school play because I was sitting in traffic. These things just kept mounting," he said at the time. "And I had to figure out a way where I could still train and focus on the craft, but still not compromise family time. That’s when I looked into helicopters to be able to get down and back in 15 minutes, and that’s how it started. So my routine was always the same. Weights early in the morning, kids to school, fly down, practice like crazy, do my extra work, media, everything I needed to do, fly back, get back in the carpool line, pick my kids up.” He kept that routine up, even when his wife offered to take over.

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Best of the Best

He went on to say, "We try to teach the kids what excellence looks like. We try to give them a foundation of the amount of work that it takes to be excellent. Playing basketball, we’re going to focus on the details. We’re going to learn the basics, learn the fundamentals and do those things over and over.”

Credit: Courtesy of Kobe Bryant/Instagram

Birthday Tribute

Kobe celebrated Gianna's 12th birthday in May 2018, writing on Instagram: "We are so proud of you! From the classroom to the court. We love you more than you could ever imagine. #hardworkdreamwork."

Credit: Courtesy of Kobe Bryant/Instagram

Life Lessons

"She understands a bunch of words already, the challenge now is getting her to speak in complete full crystal clear sentences," the two-time Olympic gold medalist captioned an adorable Instagram video in January 2018 of himself and Bianka making elephant noises and motions. "She already has plenty of words in her vocab."

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Proud Papa

In July 2017, Kobe gushed about his all-female household. "My friends say, ‘It takes a real man to make a boy,'" he told Extra. “I’m like, ‘Dude, it takes a king to make a princess. Get in line.’"