ESPN's Elle Duncan breaks down as she recalls Kobe Bryant praising his daughter Gianna: 'She's better than me'
Post the death of the basketball legend Kobe Bryant, many celebrities, sports personalities, and fans have come forward with heartwarming tributes.
The latest to join this list is ESPN anchor Elle Duncan. She paid a beautiful tribute to the fallen star and his daughter who lost their lives with seven others in a helicopter accident on January 26. She recalled the time that she had first met Bryant in May 2018 while she had been pregnant. She shared, "I saw him and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, that’s Kobe. I gotta get a picture for the 'gram."
"I didn’t get it for a few minutes ‘cause as I approached him, he immediately commented on my rather large, eight-month pregnant belly. ‘How are you? How close are you? What are you having?'" she said. When Duncan told Bryant that she was having a baby girl, he gave her a high-five and exclaimed, "Girls are the best!"
She also remembered that she had asked him for some advice given that at the time he had three daughters- Natalia, Gianna, and Bianka. Duncan recounted asking him whether he wanted any more children and he told that her that his wife Vanessa wanted to try for a boy but was jokingly concerned that it would be another girl.
"I was like, ‘Four girls? Like, are you joking? What would you think? How would you feel?’ And without hesitation, he said, ‘I would have five more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad'," Duncan revealed. Bryant then told her that his eldest daughter, Natalia, was an accomplished volleyball player while his youngest at the time, Bianka, was still "TBD".
As reported by US Weekly, then he said, "But that middle one, he said, ‘That middle one was a monster. She’s a beast. She’s better than I was at her age. She’s got it," Duncan remembered as she teared up. "That middle one, of course, was Gigi."
The father-daughter duo and seven others had been traveling to the teenager's basketball game.
She ended her tribute saying that “the only small source of comfort for me is knowing that he died doing what he loved the most: being a dad. Being a girl dad.”
