(JTA) — Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, a Philadelphia basketball hero who died Monday at the age of 69, played eight seasons in the NBA and is best known as the father of the late basketball great Kobe Bryant.
But for Philadelphia’s Jewish community, he is also being remembered for his first coaching gig: In 1992-1993, he coached the girl’s basketball team at the Akiba Hebrew Academy, a Jewish day school now known as the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy.
Though Joe only coached at Akiba for one year, he made quite an impression on the student body, faculty and the girls he coached.
Akiba grad Amy Malissa Hersz, who graduated in 1995, played for Bryant as a sophomore. “His attitude, his commitment to making us feel supported, and his constant belief in us, made for an unforgettable experience,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “His impact extended beyond the court and his lessons in leadership and sportsmanship are carried within all of us, still today.”
“I LOVED playing for him,” she added.
Jeremy Treatman, president of the Play by Play Classics sporting events company, was the Akiba boys junior varsity coach in 1992 when Joe Bryant coached the girls. “You would never believe a 6’-10″ guy who played in the NBA and was an MVP in the Italian League, could take the time to teach a bunch of girls with the amount of passion and enthusiasm that he did, by himself, at all Jewish day school, with girls who barely knew how to dribble a basketball,” he said.
Treatman added, “He was 100% in on that job, and he had a personality that was like Magic Johnson, always smiling, always encouraging those girls. And, I had trouble not looking on the other side of the court some times, because they were having so much fun.”
Bryant would coach the team to what was at the time its best record in school history. According to Hersz, there were occasions when Joe would bring his high school freshman son, Kobe, to practice. And a few of those times, Joe and Kobe would go full court against the girls team, two on five. The Bryants won, recalled Hersz, who said she still regales people with the true story of her scrimmages against Kobe Bryant three decades later.
A look into the Joe Bryant
Born in Philadelphia, Joe Bryant starred at La Salle University before playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Houston Rockets. He later moved to Europe where he starred on various teams for 10 years. Bryant returned to the Philadelphia area after his playing career ended in 1992, so Kobe could go to high school in the United States and develop his basketball skills here.
Kobe enrolled at Lower Merion High School, just outside of Philadelphia, while Joe took the job at Akiba.
Treatman said he watched in awe the first time Joe brought Kobe to a girls practice, riveted to see him doing drills on the side. “I said to Joe, what can you tell me about Kobe? Is he close to what you were like when you were his age?” Joe looked at him and said: “He’s so much better than me it’s not even funny.”
Kobe went on to win five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers, was an 18-time All-Star, and was the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player.
Treatman reached out to Joe last year to let him know that the 1996 Lower Merion team— Kobe’s state-title winning team in his senior year — was being inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. He said Joe was very happy to hear that.
Fran Dunphy, the current La Salle University head coach, played at the school a few years before Joe Bryant starred there. “He seemed to be a very happy guy. He was energetic, enthusiastic, it looked like he had fun playing basketball,” Dunphy remembered. “His personality was something that ingratiated him to many others.”
Bryant’s nephew, John Cox Jr., is an assistant coach on Dunphy’s staff at La Salle. When Bryant stopped by practice last year to visit with his team and his nephew, Dunphy found himself having to explain to his team that Joe was one of La Salle’s all-time greats.
After he left Akiba in 1993, Bryant was an assistant coach at his alma mater for several years before making a number of other coaching stops, including the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks in two separate stints.
Another former Akiba student-athlete who played for Bryant, Zahava Goldman Hurwitz, made note of that in a Facebook post Tuesday: “Jellybean Bryant coached the Akiba Lady Cougars of 92-93 over [a] decade before he became a WNBA coach. Among the many things he’ll be remembered for, I hope people know he was an advocate for women’s basketball well before it was en vogue. I will always be grateful for his easy smile, his flashy clothing on game days, some epic plays called in Italian.”
Treatman, who was an assistant coach at Lower Merion when Kobe Bryant’s team won the state championship in 1996, and a boys head coach at Akiba in the late 1990s, posted about Joe Bryant on Facebook as well Tuesday: “He was a gentle giant. I heard he died of a stroke. But I’m sure it was a broken heart.” Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in January of 2020 along with his 13-year-old daughter and seven others.