After winning the bronze medal in the women’s 3×3 basketball event at the Paris Olympics, Hailey Van Lith decided to pay tribute to her hero Kobe Bryant.

Unfortunately, her statement had the gift of irritating quite a few fans.

For the Paris Olympics, the Americans’ goal is to leave with the maximum number of awards, and even more so in basketball competitions.

Accustomed to this, they currently find themselves at the top of the medal standings. One of their latest distinctions was won during the women’s 3×3 tournament.

While the men were very disappointing by being eliminated in the group stage, the women were able to save some honor.

Beaten in the semi-final against the Spanish team, Hailey Van Lith and her teammates had to show self-sacrifice to at least snatch the bronze against their Canadian neighbors.

The young NCAA star celebrated this victory with her family, and still in a moment of joy, she also dedicated it to the memory of the late Kobe Bryant, who is one of her greatest inspirations.

Hailey Van Lith singled out after Kobe tribute

HVL said Team USA women’s 3×3 called on their inner Mamba after losing 18-16 in the semifinals to Spain.

They finished the Olympics by winning the bronze medal today against Canada. 🥉👏

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I think Kobe would be proud of me for not letting us lose that last game.

Sometimes you can’t control the results. That last game, I’m not going to lie, it was tough. It was a tough situation for us to win, we could have gone down and we didn’t.

That’s Kobe’s mentality. Move forward and win the next game.

It takes courage to get back up after a loss.

Not giving up after a failure and coming out on top in the next challenge, that’s the Mamba Mentality.

In addition to having had a legendary career, Kobe instilled this rage to win in an entire generation.

That being said, this statement was not well received by some NBA fans, as Hailey Van Lith surely expected. Because in their eyes, when the Hall of Famer participated in the Olympics, it was for the gold.

Kobe would never have wanted bronze but gold

Hailey Van Lith brought a new medal to the American delegation and wanted to dedicate it to Kobe Bryant.

Except that this award is made of bronze and not gold, which is more like an affront to the Lakers legend according to some fans.