Elle Duncan Tearful Tribute to Kobe Bryant Goes Viral #GirlDad
ESPN’s SportsCenter, anchor Elle Duncan shared a story this week from the only time she met Kobe Bryant at a New York City ESPN event in 2018. At the time she was eight months pregnant with her daughter. Duncan shared the advice the father of three daughters gave her. “Just be grateful that you’ve been given that gift, because girls are amazing.” Duncan asked how he would feel if he and Vanessa Bryant had a fourth daughter (their fourth daughter was born in 2019).
Elle Duncan is an Atlanta area native, who first professional job in media was as a sports radio co-host on the show "The 2 Live Stews" (hosted by brothers Ryan and Doug Stewart) on the former radio station known as 790 The Zone. From there came into her own as a member of the afternoon and morning shows with Ryan Cameron and then Frank Ski at WVEE V-103 as well as working on TV at WXIA 11 Alive. She left radio in 2014 and went to work at NESN (New England Sports Network) in Boston. She joined ESPN in 2016 as an anchor on SportsCenter.
Here's the above video tribute to Kobe Bryant in words.
“It’s likely that you’re hearing many personal anecdotes about Kobe Bryant, so here’s mine. I met Kobe one time, backstage at an event for ESPN in New York. And 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, because, 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?’ ‘A girl,’ I said, and he then high-fived me. ‘Girls are the best.’
“I asked him advice on raising girls, as he quite famously had three at the time. He said, ‘just be grateful that you’ve been given that gift because girls are amazing.’ His third daughter, Bianka, was about a year-and-a-half old at the time, so I asked if he wanted more children. He said that his wife Vanessa really wanted to try again for a boy, but was sort of jokingly concerned that it would be another girl. And I was like, ‘four girls, are you joking? What would you think? How would you feel?’
Without hesitation, he said ‘I would have five more girls if I could. I’m a girl dad.’
When it came to sports, he said that his oldest daughter was an accomplished volleyball player, and that the youngest was a toddler, so TBD. 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.’ That middle one of course was GiGi. When I reflect on this tragedy, and that half hour I spent with Kobe Bryant two years ago, I suppose that the only small source of comfort for me is knowing he died doing what he loved the most: being a dad. Being a girl dad.”
Today Vanessa Bryant made her first statement following the tragic death of Kobe, Gianna and the other people who lost their life on January 26, 2020 in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, California outside of Los Angeles.
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