Four years have passed since that tragic plane crash that claimed the life of Kobe Bryant and, however, the war with his parents continues. Pamela and Joe Bryant, the athlete’s parents, have put up for auction the first championship ring that their son gave them for just $30,000, although bids have already exceeded $140,000. It is a 14-carat gold jewel with forty diamonds that Kobe gave to his father in 2000 as a token of love and devotion, since the latter had also been an NBA player, but had never won the maximum. championship win. The company Goldin Auctions is the one who is orchestrating the operation for the March Elite Sports Auction.
A very questionable action by Bryant’s parents that only fuels the already irreparable conflict between the family. As far as is known, the person who manages the entire fortune that the athlete left as a legacy, estimated at around $600 million, according to Forbes, is his widow, Vanessa Bryant. She does not have any relationship with her in-laws, who opposed the relationship between the two from the beginning. In fact, they didn’t even make an appearance at her wedding. The reasons were both personal and economic. First of all, they didn’t like the speed of the marriage – they met while recording a video clip in 1999 and got married in 2001 – nor that she wasn’t African-American. On the other hand, Vanessa began to manage her husband’s finances and all those luxuries and expenses that her parents had benefited from disappeared.
From then on, the distancing and continuous rudeness began. In 2003, in an important game for Kobe, his mother asked him to leave a ticket at the box office for his father and he never showed up. “I knew he wouldn’t come to see me. He never does,” he told the Los Angeles Times. Ten years later, the parents put up several of the basketball legend’s personal items for auction, including that same ring that they are now trying to sell. When Kobe Bryant found out what happened, he wanted to sue the Goldin house to immediately remove his belongings, something they refused, alleging that his parents Pamela and Joe were the legal owners. They finally reached an agreement and only six objects worth half a million dollars were sold. With this sum of money they bought a house in Las Vegas, a decision they later regretted. In 2019, Pam put up for auction a 2,000 championship ring that Kobe gave her. She sold it for 206,000. Now, history repeats itself.
