A big night for women’s basketball becomes a night honoring Kobe and Gianna Bryant | Mike Jensen

HARTFORD, Conn. — The moment of silence lingered past a moment, silence complete. If everyone inside the XL Center on Monday night had been asked to stay silent for 8 minutes, or 24 minutes, who would have objected?

The University of Connecticut women were out there to play the U.S. national team in a much-locally-awaited exhibition, with so many UConn legends returning in USA jerseys.

There were other jerseys in the crowd. Kobe jerseys. There was a guy in head-to-toe purple, all Lakers gear. A woman in a custom Bryant jersey, and Kobe sneakers.

The night became more about the silence. A seat was left empty on the UConn bench for Gianna Bryant, a UConn jersey with her number draped over the back, flowers placed on the seat. These players had met this girl and her father, Kobe. Gianna, a 13-year-old already known to them as Gigi, had told them she wanted to play for UConn, to be one of them.

Videos of her fadeaway jumper, so reminiscent of her father’s signature shot, told them all this wasn’t some crazy dream.

“The first time they were at a [UConn] game … she was like a little kid, looking up at our players,’’ UConn coach Geno Auriemma said later. “You could just see the look in her eyes — she was so excited. Now imagine the absurdity of that. Your father’s Kobe Bryant and the most excited you’ve been in a long time is being around college women’s basketball players. That’s what it meant to her. That’s what she aspired to be. So you’ve got Gigi and her role models, people she looks up to, and you’ve got our players, looking at her dad, like Uhhhhh. It was a real head-shaking scene.”

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Father and daughter came to a second game, on UConn’s campus.

“If she could have stayed, I think she would have stayed,’’ Auriemma said.

A lot of conversations inside this arena Monday — a day after nine people, including Kobe and Gianna Bryant, perished in a helicopter crash — were about how the respect given to women’s basketball by Kobe Bryant didn’t start when his daughter began playing and dreaming.

“He was always a big fan, a big supporter,’’ said national team veteran Sue Bird, a four-time Olympic gold medalist. “Having his daughter involved. … Since his retirement, having more time, to show face, to be at games, to take his daughter. … You actually find this in a lot of NBA players. They’re not sizing us up. They’re not saying …”

Here, Bird switched into a lunkhead voice.

“HEY, I COULD PLAY YOU ONE-ON-ONE.”

“They just appreciate good basketball,’’ Bird said, back in normal voice. “Of all people, Kobe appreciated good basketball. Look at all his interviews; that’s what he talked about. He appreciated greatness. And how to be great. He also understood that he needed to pass it on and pay it forward. I think what he was doing with the women’s game was just that. Even a simple tweet, he knew, would go a mile.”

The reaction to his death shows the impact, Bird said.

“I think as a women’s basketball player, there’s a little extra because he was so supportive,’’ said Bird, who had most recently sat next to Kobe at the WNBA’s All-Star Game last summer. “The thing that makes you the saddest, he was just starting his life in a lot of ways.”

Maya Moore is on a sabbatical from basketball right now, but she was in the building because UConn happened to have chosen this time to honor its 2009 and ‘10 NCAA title teams, led by Moore. Just days ago, Bryant had said in a CNN interview that Moore and Diana Taurasi and Elena Delle Donne had the skills to play in the NBA.

“I did not know that — that is pretty baller,’’ said Renee Montgomery, Moore’s former UConn teammate.

Montgomery began talking about Kobe’s overall support.

“There’s not a whole lot of people who are just out here putting the women’s game on their back,’’ she said. “You can just see, from his Mamba Academy, he’s at WNBA All-Star; he’s at random games, he’s not only at the flashy games. He’s showing up; he’s wearing the WNBA hoodies. So he was someone who firmly believed in the product of women’s basketball, and he was trying to push the envelope.

"For me, being a women’s basketball player, that’s a heavy blow. Because he was making strides, opening up doors. He brings a certain level of visibility wherever he goes. So if he’s pushing the women’s game, he brings that with him. It was a heavy blow.”

“It’s hard to put into words,’’ Moore said. “We all need time to grieve and process. We’ve all experienced loss. But his name was Kobe. You all know what that means. Whatever we’re investing in, to just go after it, the same way he did, I think that would be a great way to honor him.”

Taurasi pointed out that Bryant made it all right to be obsessive about something. Kobe had long ago given Taurasi the nickname “White Mamba.”

“I don’t think he got a chance to really establish one in our game,’’ Auriemma said when asked about Bryant’s legacy in the women’s game. “In the next 30 years, he might have been, for the next generation, who knew his daughter and played with Gigi. Now, he gets involved at a whole 'nother level, because of her. You don’t know.”

The wider impact was already established, Auriemma said.

“Introducing the NBA to a whole part of the world who didn’t know about him,’’ Auriemma said. “And his businesses, things he was getting done … those are things that will last forever.”

The UConn coach had gotten to know Bryant through their shared Olympic experiences. They’d even switch up languages.

“Two guys from Philadelphia speaking Italian, because we’d both lived there,’’ Auriemma said.

During the 2012 London Olympics, there was an off day for the U.S. men. The U.S. women got to the gym. There was Kobe.

“My team standing there, just staring,” Auriemma said. “Shot after shot after shot. I just shook my head and said, ‘That’s why he is who he is.’ ”

He also laughed about Bryant starting to coach his own daughter a bit, calling to ask about what drills to use.

“I said, ‘What, didn’t you pay attention all those years in practice?’ ‘’ Auriemma said. “He said, ‘I’ve got to teach man-to-man defense tonight.’ … Nobody could score on him for 20 years and he’s asking me about defense.”

It has been a tough time for everyone, Auriemma said. You don’t know what to say, what to do. Never mind his impact on the sport.

“He probably would have had a bigger impact on his kids, more than anything,’’ Auriemma said.

UConn gave Team USA a game, tied at halftime, still in range into the fourth quarter, before it ended with a 79-64 U.S. victory. The two teams had joined in a circle at center court for the moment of silence. Then there was an 8-second violation by one team, and a 24-second violation by the other, honoring Bryant’s two Lakers jersey numbers.

Thoughts of Kobe’s daughter lingered. After the game ended and everyone left the court, even as cleanup crews got to work, that jersey and those flowers remained out there on the UConn bench.