Joe Bryant – Bio Of Kobe Bryant’s Father, Net Worth, Wife, Children, Facts

The Bryant name belongs to one of the greatest basketball players of all time but in the history of American Basketball, two men that bear this name have walked the halls of fame of this game. One of these men is Joe Bryant. The scope of this Bryant’s career is not just limited to the years he spent as a player as he also worked in the capacity of a coach. Keep reading to learn more about his attainments in the field, net worth, family life, and what have you.

Bio of Kobe Bryant’s Father

The 19th of October 1954 was a sunny day in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and it was the day when Joe Bryant, whose full name is Joseph Washington Bryant, was born. He grew up to be known as Joe “Jellybean” Bryant. There is not a lot of information on his background, parents or the type of life he led as a child growing up in Philadelphia, the largest city in all of America.

As a child, Joe showed signs of being a skilled ballplayer, and when he was at John Bartram High school where he bagged his high school diploma, he played on the school’s team. From John Bartram, he went ahead to La Salle University where he played on the school’s team, La Salle Explorers. He was at the school for two years from 1973 to 1975, before he declared himself for the NBA draft of ’75. The San Francisco based team; Golden State Warriors was the team that selected him in the first round of the draft of that year, and he was the 14th overall pick of the year. But he did not play with the Warriors as they decided to trade him to his home team the Philadelphia 76ers.

With the 76ers he played for four seasons in the position of a forward, when he left the team in 1979 he joined the San Diego Clippers. Joe played for four seasons with the first two teams he played with and after that, the maximum amount of time he spent with another team was just two seasons.

Joe Bryant retired from playing the game in 1992, but it was not until 2003 he started coaching teams in the major leagues. Prior to becoming a major league coach, Bryant had coached a college women’s team and had worked as an assistant coach for La Salle the school he graduated from. In all of his as a coach Bryant coached eight teams, and during these years the Los Angeles Sparks is the only team he coached twice, the 2006 to 2007 season was the first season he worked with them and in 2011 he returned to the team for a year.

As a coach, Joe Bryant worked with teams outside of the American league. The first international team he coached was the Tokyo Apache which was based in Japan; he was with this team for 2 seasons before going ahead to coach other teams in the Japanese league. Bryant worked with a total number of four teams in that league. But coaching was not the only venture he did in this sport in another country. As a basketball player, Bryant played in the French and Italian league, in the latter he played for seven years while he was in the French league for a year.

Joe Bryant’s Net Worth

Joe Bryant has once revealed that he is not comfortable with people having a lot of information on him. He would rather live under the radar and because of this, certain information about him has not been made available to the public, one of these things is his net worth.

Joe Bryant Wife and Children

The basketball player is married to a woman called, Pam Cox. The two got married in 1975 when Cox was 16 and Bryant was 21. Before she became his wife, she was mostly known as the sister of John Arthur Cox, who also played in the NBA.

The couple has three children together, Sharia, Shaya, and Kobe. The last child, Kobe is the other member of the Bryant family who played basketball professionally. He is the most popular member of the family and for the longest time, he had a strained relationship with his parents.

Tragedy struck on the 26th of January 2020 when Joe lost his son Kobe Bryant. The basketballer and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna helicopter crash in Calabasas, California. Nine passengers were on board and none of them survived the accident.

Read Also: Oliver Miller Bio: Facts To Know About The Former Basketball Star

Other Facts

• Joe Bryant goes by the nickname Jelly and it was given to him by a childhood friend for how well he moved on the court.
• This basketball player is 6 feet 9 inches tall and weighs 84 kg.
• Despite his career as a player and as a coach, Joe Bryant is mostly remembered as being the father of Kobe Bryant.

Complete profile of Joe Bryant