Kentucky selected as Mamba Program ahead of '23-24 season

Kentucky has been selected as a Mamba Program ahead of the 2023-24 college basketball season, multiple sources tell KSR.

Vanessa Bryant — wife of the late Kobe Bryant — hand-picked the University of Kentucky as the first Mamba school in the partnership with Nike, a process over a year in the making now finalized. Several other programs are expected to join the fold over the course of the multi-year rollout.

What will the partnership look like? The Wildcats will wear exclusive Kentucky-themed Kobe sneakers and apparel this season, sources tell KSR. Special uniforms featuring the Mamba logo are also possible in the future.

Vanessa Bryant and the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation first gifted the team Mambacita Kobe 4s ahead of Kentucky’s trip to Toronto for the GLOBL JAM in July. John Calipari also received a personal gift from the Bryant family back in May: his own pair of Mambacitas, along with a Gigi Bryant jersey and Kobe’s book, “The Mamba Mentality: How I Play.”

I just received the most incredible gift from Vanessa and Natalia Bryant.

Happy 17th birthday, Gigi!!

Thinking today of Gigi and all of the lives she touched and continues to touch!!#PlayGigisWay pic.twitter.com/mruCZIFaop

— John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) May 1, 2023

Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Kobe and Gianna “GiGi” Bryant following their tragic deaths in January 2020.

Kentucky hosted Natalia Bryant, Kobe’s oldest daughter, and the family’s organization for the Mamba Skills Academy last October. Held at Memorial Coliseum, the youth basketball camp was free of charge to underserved boys and girls in the community. Players and coaches from the men’s and women’s basketball teams helped run the camp, which featured drill stations and five-on-five battles.

“This is the first partnership with any university,” Kat Conlon, executive director of the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, told media in attendance. “Coach Calipari and Kobe Bryant had a very special relationship, so anything we can do with the foundation that continues to tell the stories of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, we are all game for it with the foundation.”

Kentucky will continue to tell those stories through this permanent partnership as a Mamba Program.