After numerous battles inside the court, it was Kobe Bryant's efforts outside the NBA that really stuck with former two-time All-Star Zach Randolph.
After his last season with the Sacramento Kings in 2019, Randolph enrolled his eldest daughter MacKenly to Kobe Bryant's Team Mamba, a basketball training camp for a bunch of talented seventh and eighth-graders. This was when the relationship between these former NBA stars blossomed from former court competitors to fellow #GirlDads.
And, per Randolph, Kobe Bryant was one heck of a mentor to these kids, especially his.
“He’s one of the best to ever do it,” Randolph said (via The New York Times).
A year after the fatal crash of a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant alongside his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and a few other members of Team Mamba en route to one of their games, Randolph reflects on how legendary Kobe's run was as the head honcho of this little girls team.
“He put his all into it,” Randolph added about Kobe Bryant. “He ran it like a real organization.”
The former Memphis Grizzlies forward was amazed at how much of Kobe's NBA personality was imprinted with how they did things in Team Mamba. Kobe Bryant, alongside assistant coach Christina Mauser who was also part of that fatal crash, was very hands-on with how they run the camp. They had yoga sessions, beach workouts, and they even spent hours in the film room to try to be as detailed as possible in terms of the girls' development.
It was striking for Randolph how Kobe Bryant was still able to bring out his #MambaMentality years after he left the NBA and how he was able to successfully rub that off with these young girls.
MacKenly, 15, is hoping to bring everything she has learned from her short stint with Team Mamba under the mentorship of Kobe Bryant. She is set to join Sierra Canyon School's basketball program as a freshman.
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