Kobe Bryant’s tragic death Sunday stirred the emotions of several people in the Delaware basketball community who had crossed paths with the legendary athlete.
Most prominently was Elena Delle Donne, the 2019 WNBA Most Valuable Player.
Just last Wednesday, in an interview with CNN, Bryant had said, “I think there are a couple of [female] players who could play in the NBA right now honestly. There’s a lot of players with a lot of skill that could do it.”
Bryant then singled out Delle Donne, the Ursuline Academy and University of Delaware graduate, along with Diana Taurasi and Maya Moore.
“There’s a lot of great players out there so they could certainly keep up with them,” Bryant said.
Delle Donne knew Bryant personally. In an Instagram post Sunday that included a photo taken several years ago of Delle Donne, Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who also perished in the crash, Delle Donne wrote:
“Not only did I have the pleasure of knowing Kobe but I was also able to meet his beautiful daughter. My heart is broken. Thoughts and prayers for his family and the families of the other passengers on board.”
Delle Donne underwent back surgery in Texas on Friday. She has not been available for comment.
Bryant, when he attended Lower Merion High in suburban Philadelphia, had credited a Delaware tournament for giving him his first and best taste of high-level competition. Bryant had just finished his junior year when he made his third straight April visit to Delaware in 1995.
The eight annual Delaware Shootout at the University of Delaware Field House brought all-star and AAU teams from near and far to demonstrate their talents in front of college recruiters.
Bryant told The News Journal that his first visit to the Shootout was actually his initial encounter with 7-footers and other top-level players. It left him, he said, “shell-shocked at first.… I can remember the next day I had to adjust my game.”
In 1995, he was the nation’s third-ranked high school junior prospect and clearly showed why, scoring 34 points in his team’s 55-35 win in one game as college coaches feasted their eyes at UD.
Bryant had attended first through eighth grade while living in Italy, where his father, Joe, a former 76ers player, had gone to continue his pro career. Kobe explained how that enabled him to concentrate on, in the true European style, learning the game’s fundamentals, such as defensive nuances and footwork, rather than making the spectacular play.
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“Kobe loves the game and wants to make himself better and works at it,” his dad told The News Journal then.
Bryant certainly left an impression on Jim Doody, the ex-Newark High coach who founded and operated the Delaware Shootout.
“You see some of these kids when they’re very young and they’re already being very touted,” Doody, who guided the Yellowjackets to three state titles in his 18 seasons through 1994-95, said this week. “They already have that air of indifference to everybody.
“But he didn’t have that at all. He was an incredibly engaging personality as far as I was concerned.”
Among Bryant’s teammates at the Delaware Shootout were future NBA All-Star Rip Hamilton, from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and Adonal Foyle, who later set NCAA shot-blocking records at Colgate before playing 733 NBA games, mostly with Golden State.
“He was just a regular old kid who loved to play basketball,” said Doody, despite Bryant’s upbringing as the son of a pro player. “Some of these kids’ talents were so above and beyond everybody else.”
Among Bryant’s high school contemporaries was University of Delaware basketball coach Martin Ingelsby, who is three months and a day younger than the 41-year-old Bryant but was a grade behind him in school. Ingelsby was from Berwyn, Pennsylvania, 10 miles down U.S. 30 from Bryant’s hometown of Wynnewood.
“When he was looking to go to high school, his dad and my dad had a conversation about him coming to Carroll,” said Ingelsby, whose father, Tom, was the basketball coach at Archbishop Carroll, where Martin was Catholic League Player of the Year as a senior in 1997.
“His dadwas a legend in the Philadelphia area and my dad [who also played in the NBA] knew him.”
Bryant attended Lower Merion, his area public school, which he sparked to the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA title. Ingelsby witnessed some of his games.
“You just knew how talented he was,” Ingelsby recalled. “I went down to a couple games just to be able to watch him at Lower Merion. It’d be packed, people hanging from the rafters to be able to see the game. They had to play some of those games at Villanova or down at the Palestra. He was just a once-in-a-generation talent.’’
Ingelsby remembers pouring over high school basketball box scores in the Philadelphia Inquirer with his dad every morning.
“You’d always go to Lower Merion to see how many points Kobe had,” Ingelsby recalled. “Just an unbelievable talent.”
Ingelsby had seen that first hand in 1995 when he played against Bryant at what was termed an “All-American Game” at Eastern Regional High in Voorhees Township, New Jersey. The 16 players came from six states.
“We went over the bridge and I was nervous as can be because I was a young guy at the time,” Ingelsby, who played college basketball at Notre Dame, recalled. “You were just kinda starting to develop as a basketball player, a little bit of a buzz about you, and I gotta go down there and play in this all-star game with Kobe Bryant.”
Bryant scored 43 points in the game. Ingelsby, on the opposite team,had two, but plenty of assists. A videotape from the game shows one of Bryant’s teammates stealing a pass from Ingelsby, wearing a baggy No. 14 uniform, and passing to Bryant who soars in for a lay-up.
Later, Bryant receives a long pass just out of Ingelsby’s reach off a missed shot and, as he drives and jumps to the basket, passes the basketball between his legs before delivering a thunderous dunk.
Like many in the basketball world and especially those with ties to suburban Philadelphia, Ingelsby was “at a loss,” he said, after hearing the stunning news Sunday.
“He was a guy you grew up following closely and were always amazed at what he was doing,” said Ingelsby, who, with wife Colleen, is the father of four. “It’s just tragic, all those lives lost.”
Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.
