Vanessa Bryant has taken to social media to commemorate a special day in sports history. The mother of four posted a sweet video in honor of her husband, Kobe Bryant's, last day playing in the NBA. While the day is monumental for sports fans, it means even more now after Bryant's tragic death alongside his young daughter Gianna and seven others in a helicopter crash back in January.
Bryant played the last game of his impressive twenty-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers on April 13, 2016, known as “Mamba Day”. Vanessa shared a video of Kobe's last game in a heartbreaking post on Instagram. She wrote about her husband's monumental career and how he was so looking forward to spending his retirement with his family. She went on to detail his accomplishments on and off the court before praising her daughter, Gianna, and her talent on the basketball court.
"Mamba Day," she began her post. "My husband worked his ass off for 20 years. Gave it his all. All he wanted was to spend time with our girls and me to make up for lost time. He wanted to be there for every single milestone and special moment in our girls lives. He only got to enjoy 3 years and 9 months of retirement. We had 2 more daughters, he won an Oscar, he opened Granity studios, he became a 5x best selling author and coached Gianna’s basketball team in that time. She worked hard and gave her all 7 days a week just like her daddy. I wish I could go back to that morning, every day. I wish they had a normal local game on 1/26. Life truly isn’t fair. This is just senseless."
The five-minute video features highlights from Kobe's last game, including fellow NBA legend Magic Johnson introducing him before he took to the court, to game highlights and his famous final speech to fans where he ended saying simply, "Mamba out," before placing his microphone on the court.
The video in the post showed Magic Johnson's speech before the game, Kobe's final introduction and highlights from the game. The video then pans to Kobe sharing a sweet moment with Vanessa and daughters Natalia and Gianna before waving again to his fans. As the screen fades to black the words, "RIP Kobe and Gianna Bryant AKA Black Mamba and Mambacita," appear.