Dearica Hamby still smiles at the memory of Kobe Bryant sitting courtside at WNBA games. She had met him years ago. He came to see her old team, the Las Vegas Aces, play all the time. “I think one of the first things he told me was that I could play defense,

Bryant ‘really was that loud voice and very prominent voice very early when it maybe wasn’t the trendy, popular thing to do or wasn’t cool to show us love,’ Lunar Owls veteran Skylar Diggins-Smith said.