Kobe Bryant served as a mentor to @haileyvanlith. In 2023, she reflected on how this mentorship molded her into the player she is today: “When I think about Kobe and what he meant to me, he made me feel OK with who I was and how competitive I was. I feel like, especially as a girl, people don’t want to see competitiveness, the aggression, the frustration, the s*** talking. They don’t want to see that in women’s sports. That’s who I am — I’m fiery, I’m passionate, I love basketball. I’m super competitive and I’m gonna fight. I felt like that was something bad about me, and I had people growing up telling me, ‘You need to change that. People aren’t gonna like that you act like that.’ Kobe saw that in me and let me know that it was OK. He was like that too and it’s what made him who he was. I feel comfortable in who I am now.” (Listen to her #SometimesIHoop episode, link in bio) • 📸: @kyle_rivas, @davidkpurdy