Kobe Bryant Found Texas Commit Amalia Holguin at 9, Now She’s The Last “Mamba”

I'm Amma Leah Hogan and you're watching Sports Illustrated.

I had the opportunity to be coached by Kobe, and there are so many girls in this world, and for me to get picked is like kind of crazy to me.

And I know like the story is like very sad.

I kind of just want to tell it more than hide away from it.

And this is him saying we practice every damn night we practice forever.

I mean, with everything I experienced, I mean, it's a lot going into every game.

I want to play for them, and since they didn't get the chance to finish off their dreams.

Growing up like in LA and having family that watches the Lakers any night they play, I definitely watched Kobe a lot.

On his last game, I was sitting on the couch just crying watching him play because I was like it's the last time I've ever seen him play basketball, and two years later I was on his team, so it's pretty crazy how it all like translated into my life.

What can I say?

Mamba out.

I was on a team called Nico's and I played under a guy named Steve Williams who I still know and he was like, we're playing against the Mambas today and I was just like, dang, like this is crazy.

And then my coach was like yelling at me.

I was just missing.

And then Kobe was like, dang, like she's good and like she's getting yelled at for like things she shouldn't be getting yelled at for.

When I walked down the stairs, and he was like yelling my name.

I'm Aliyah, and I was just like, wow, like.

Kobe Bryant knows my name.

That's so weird.

And he was like, I need a coach here.

So then after the game, he was like, meet me under the staircase and my manager will be there.

This guy named John Spots came out who was like our team manager of Mamba's, and he was like, Kobe wants you to come to practice.

I wasn't going to say no, so I showed up to practice and, and he was like, So are you going to be a mamba or are you gonna go back and play for Nico's?

And I was like, I'm a mamba.

And he was like, there it is.

It's like our slam photo and like during it we were smiling like a lot and he was like if you don't get this photo done and stop smiling you're about to run the whole practice so we got into shape real quick because we were not about to run because he didn't play by his conditioning yeah blessed to be on sled.

Luckily I was kind of short so I got a little front spot.

When I got on Kobe's team, I have to take this for real if I really wanna do this.

Get kind of hyped when I do stuff and see my other teammates do stuff and I think just the game brings me energy.

I just have like a lot of fun on the court with it.

Gigi used to play Mo Bamba before every game.

It was crazy.

And then Kobe was like big Beyonce fan, so he was like, play Beyonce.

I didn't really know the lyrics, but I had to learn them.

Yeah, we got to meet a lot of people and go to like a lot of games.

This is us like meeting Sabrina, he like brought a lot of people in so we can meet and just learn from different women that were higher up in the game.

This is us and Team Mac Cham God.

This is Gabby Williams.

This is my mom's favorite player.

Yeah, Gabby's so cool.

She played for France.

Kyrie, Kyrie was cool.

Kyrie's hella cool.

Like we like played like 5 on 5 and he was like playing with us.

Well, I just think his philosophy was like just to bring in better people so we looked bad and we were like, man, we gotta work harder.

Like if this is how good they are and this is how much we're losing by, we got a lot of work to do.

He always used to just remind us like even if you lose, you gotta go back in the gym because one day you're gonna be up there with them and y'all gotta hang with them.

So this is like what we dreamed of of being like Hayley Van Leet and dreamed of being in their position, so bringing them in and seeing what they can do with their back and just building ours.

Every time I walk into a gym, it was never like Emily, it was always like, uh, the last mamba or the Kobe girl.

I just kind of just carried this legacy and carried this name with me.

It has like a lot of pros and cons to it, but I kind of just keep it on the positive side, and I had the opportunity to be coached by Kobe, and whatever it gives me, I'll take.

We had a 6 year plan with Kobe and it was always to go to Sage Hill.

My commute is crazy.

It's like 1 hour 20 minutes, so I've been going to Sage since like elementary school, basically.

It was Kobe's plan and we kind of just followed through after their, their passing.

So I think it was just bigger than, bigger than basketball is finishing it out for them and especially me, it was a harder decision because I would have been left alone because the girls were 2 years older, but I also was a part of the story and wanted to finish it.

This is actually crazy.

This team, they actually beat us like every single time.

Like the team was called We Are One or I don't know, they changed their name hello, but.

This team actually beat us and he was like, bro, I'm not losing to them no more.

So he like.

Took 2 months off without playing them and the next time we played them we get them 115 to 27.

And we all always had matching shoes.

He was big on matching y'all all the same.

Y'all all wear the same thing, same uniform, and everybody's equal.

So whether you're like bench player starting, like we are a team, we're all, we gotta stay together so everyone wore the same thing, same socks.

Sierra Cannon had like a powerhouse school.

They have all this media on them, and we were the underdogs.

So I mean going into it they were like, dang, HO gotta play Sierra.

If you wanna be the best, you gotta play the best.

We just had this different mindset.

I've never seen my team have this like determination to beat anybody before.

We didn't want to go out without a fight, so the whole time it was like play for our seniors so they can get one more game.

We just wanted it more.

He showed up on top.

I say like Steph Curry, just a little bit of like Asia's energy.

I get pretty energetic at times and kind of loud, but I say kind of nonchalant and quiet too with my 3 ball and do a lot of sellies.

I don't know, it just comes out of nowhere because my personality is a lot different out off the court.

So I was thinking like maybe dropping 40 points and, you know, in addition to my teammates, but I had the green light that night.

Texas was my first visit.

I wasn't like thinking of committing or any of that because I had other schools lined up after they kind of just felt like the closest thing to family and they had like more than just like this team bonding like the teammates were actually friends and you don't see that.

I hung out with the team, hung out with the coaches a lot.

It took me around.

I had a feeling and I had to commit on my visit.

So we were in Gigi's room and him and Devin were having like this talking in the living room and we were playing Uno as a team.

The whole team left and it was just me, Ellie, Zoey.

It was like getting late.

We had a game and he was like, Bro, y'all gotta get out of here.

We got a game tomorrow, and he kicked us out of his room playing Uno.

Kobe.

Oh, he didn't play with us.

He was too competitive to play with us.

Some of my favorite memories were definitely just seeing his mindset and having his mindset translate into ours.

No, like 10 year old's gonna wake up at 5 a.m. to go train on the beach.

He was like really big on on court and off court how we were so he just built our mindset.

It's like a lot of determination if you want it, you gotta go get it.

So I think my whole mentality comes from him.

After every day he was like, look yourself in the mirror and see if you got better, and if you didn't, you got tomorrow.

When you walk into anywhere, people just look at you.

But I've kind of just took it into my hands every opportunity I get to take it in a positive way.

Kobe was always big on like, make yourself uncomfortable to be better , so that's what I'm going to do.

I want to take the sport as far as I can go, whether that's WNBA overseas.

I mean, I've dreamt of this as a little kid, so I just wanna go to college and like put in all the work to get minutes and be their player and after that go play in the W with people I dreamed of playing with Caitlin and Paige and just learning from them and just going into every room learning and listening and just growing my game.

When you think of like a famous person, I just feel like you're like, oh, they're cocky.

They think they're better than everyone, but he wanted to be close to everyone and feel like everyone had a space to talk to him.

Everyone who came up to him, he was so nice too.

Going into every game, I want to play for them and.

Since they didn't get the chance to finish off their dreams, so I just kind of play with through them.

I play with 4 to 8 on my shoes, on my sleeve.

I represent them every game, not necessarily one game.

Every game I wanna take pride in that.

I just want to leave a legacy where little girls like look up to me and Especially little girls that like lose people at a young age, keep pushing and keep going.

You could play for them and through them and make it motivation more than just stop playing and like kind of sulk in it just.

Just keep playing and do what you love for them.