Shaya Bryant’s daughter turns another year older every August 23rd. So would have her brother, Kobe Bryant. For six years, that’s meant hearing both celebration and grief knock on her door on the exact same day.
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Speaking on the Born To The Game podcast, Shaya, Kobe Bryant’s older sister, talked through what that actually feels like. Asked whether grief gets easier with time, she said that instead of fading and obeying the age-old “time heals everything,” it gets reopened on a schedule. Calling August 23 “a beauty and a curse,” she shared another facet to it all. She loves the day for the old highlight reels that take over feeds and dreads it for the same reason.
Kobe, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, on January 26, 2020. Six years on, the loss still surfaces and pokes through anniversaries, social media tributes, and a week each August built around honoring him.
“It’s just so weird… like I said, when people pass, like our grandparents when they’re older, but with this situation or this happening, it’s more of, it’s like a band-aid, right?” Shaya explained. “So you think you’re healing and the wound has closed, but then there are anniversaries that come up, birthdays that come up, different things. And it’s such in a public manner that it’s everywhere, like you can’t really heal… nor escape it.”
Kobe was born on August 23, 1978, and the days around that date have assumed an unparalleled importance of their own. Nike branded it “Mamba Week” back in 2020, and the following day, August 24, is officially recognized as Kobe Bryant Day in Los Angeles and Orange County, a nod to the No. 8 and No. 24 he wore over 20 seasons. Inside the Bryant family, though, August 23 carries a second meaning, too.
In 2008, while Kobe was in Beijing starting every game for Team USA’s “Redeem Team” on the way to Olympic gold, Shaya was in labor with her daughter, Autumn, who happened to arrive on Kobe’s birthday.
“My husband and I talk about it, too. He said, ‘Listen, I know it is coming up,’ ’cause he could tell my mood shifts, okay, a little bit,” Shaya shared on the podcast. “So, he’s like, ‘How are you feeling?’ Okay. And like for his [Kobe] birthday, for example, I always try to work on a post in my mind a couple days leading up to it, because I know the date of. And crazy fact — it’s a beautiful fact, though — but Autumn, my daughter, and Kobe share the same birthday.”
Kobe, it turns out, predicted the whole thing.
“She was due August 21st. And when I was pregnant, he was like, ‘Oh, no. She’s coming on my birthday.’ I was like, ‘There ain’t no way.’ ‘Cause that means she’s two days late and she’s getting evicted. There’s no way. And sure as… she came when he was playing in the Olympics in 2008. So while he was playing, I was pushing. Literally. So she was born same birthday.”
Asked how she balances celebrating her daughter while grieving her brother on the same date, Shaya didn’t pretend it was simple.
“It’s hard to navigate, I’m not going to lie. ‘Cause you want to celebrate your child, while also grieving and celebrating your brother.”
Still, her routine on August 23 puts her daughter first.
“Get up, see how you feel. I really do. But I need to make sure my daughter’s okay first and celebrate her, right? And then if it’s on a day that she has school or whatever that looks like, I’ll go through my moment privately or with my husband, you know, if I need to cry, I cry. If I need to call someone, I’ll call. But when she’s there, I want to celebrate her and make sure she sees it.”
The Bryant family has faced immense loss in recent years. Shaya’s father, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, died in July 2024. He was 69, and he’d had a stroke. Through it all, the Bryant family continues to get through in a way many cannot fathom.