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Kobe Bryant is helping hundreds of local kids with his Mamba League basketball program

Written by
Brittany Martin
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Kobe Bryant may have retired from the Lakers last year, but he hasn’t entirely given up basketball. In collaboration with Nike and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Los Angeles, Bryant has launched the Mamba League, a youth basketball league reaching underprivileged communities across the region. 

“This is more than just a competition,” Bryant said in a Nike press release. “The league is about empowering players and coaches and seeing kids increase their self-confidence as young leaders both on and off the court.”

For the first season of Mamba League, 288 players (129 girls and 159 boys) from Watts, Whittier, West San Gabriel Valley-Monterey Park and Venice were divided into teams overseen by 40 volunteer coaches from the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Nike Community Ambassador Program.

Next year, the organization plans to build on their success with an expansion to more neighborhoods where kids are in need of fun, safe things to do and positive community role models.

Since the players are all 8 to 10 years old, the court is a bit scaled down and baskets are installed a little lower than you would find at the Staples Center. That’s intended to make the young athletes feel more confident in their skills, and it’s a part of the program that Bryant personally insisted upon. He didn’t play on a full-height hoop until he was 12, which he credits with contributing to his own famous displays of on-court self-confidence. 

 

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