MacKenly Randolph, daughter of two-time NBA All-Star Zach Randolph, was coached by Kobe at the Mamba Sports Academy (since renamed Sports Academy, the “Mamba” retired) and had made the same helicopter trip from Newport to Thousand Oaks with him and Gigi a week before they died. “He basically taught me how to play defense and how to rotate,” the teen told The New York Times. As a coach, “You would know when he’s mad, or he’s not playing around, but he would never, like, yell at you.”
Zach added, “He loved them girls. He loved my baby. He told me, ‘I love her, man.’ When he told me that, I told him, ‘We’re brothers for life.'”
And he certainly understood where Kobe was coming from. “It’s a great feeling,” Zach, also dad to daughter Maziya as well as three sons, told the Los Angeles Times. “Girl dad, oh man. I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Keep reading to see more of Kobe Bryant’s MVP moments as a girl dad: