WHILE Kobe Bryant's six-month-old baby girl Capri will tragically grow up never knowing her dad – mom Vanessa “will dedicate her life" to her and their other two daughters, a close pal has revealed.

Distraught Vanessa is currently enduring "incredible grief" with her daughters after her husband and their daughter Gianna, 13, were killed in helicopter crash on Sunday, the basketball legend's long term friend and Laker's photographer Andy D Bernstein told The Sun.

NBA Media Hall Of Famer Andy also revealed that family man Kobe, 41, only decided to start traveling in helicopters so he could spend more time with his kids.

The sports star moved to Orange County – 70 miles from central Los Angeles – at his wife’s wishes and would even wake up at 3am so he could work out at the gym and be back before his kids woke up.

But Kobe felt he was wasting too much time traveling back and forward in cars, and that choppers were more efficient.

Andy, 61, and Kobe formed a two decade long friendship after the basketball, then a young high school pick, introduced himself as a “huge fan” to the snapper during his first media day.

Reflecting on the impact of Kobe's death on Vanessa and her daughters, Andy said: “I can only imagine that she will dedicate her life to her girls as being a mother.

“If you look at her Instagram and her social media postings, it’s all about being a mother.

“It’s all about the joy of being with her kids and of course her husband and being a family and that is only going to be ratcheted up now.

“She unfortunately has to have this responsibility alone and bare the burden of this incredible grief and this loss and this hole that they will always have with the two of them being missing forever.

“She is a very strong woman and incredibly dedicated to her family and she knows how he would want her to continue on – so she does.”

Andy said that everyone regarded Bryant as an “excellent dad”, and the family will be deeply impacted by the loss.

“The shock will never wear off. Not only did Vanessa and the girls lose their daddy and husband, but they lost their sister.

"I really, really cannot imagine what they are going through. I have reached out to let them know if there is anything I could possibly do as their friend, that I am there.”

Andy revealed how helicopter travel became the norm for Bryant because he wanted to spend as much time with his family as possible.

“When Kobe and Vanessa got married they decided to live in Orange County, which is where she grew up and she is very close with her family.

"Orange County is not an easy commute to LA even on the best of days with no traffic it is an hour and 15 minutes minimum. He accepted that as what they were going to do and make that work.

"At the beginning of their marriage he was commuting – and would leave at 3 o’ clock in the morning to do a workout no matter what day religiously to be the first guy in the gym, before the sun came up.

"Sometimes he would do his workout and go back home for breakfast or take his kids to school.

“And then it became too arduous of a commute and that is why he decided to commute by helicopter. He would take it from Newport Beach to LAX, which is a stone’s throw from the Lakers practice facility.

“And after coming home from road games, he would fly back from LAX by helicopter. And that grew then he started to commute from there for games at Staples Center – that became his local mode of transportation.

“And this was all because of his family. He wanted to be home as soon as he could to be with them.

“We would come back from a road trip land at LAX at 4 o’clock in the morning and he wanted to get home to be there for the girls when they woke up in the morning.

"He built a gym in his house so he wouldn’t have to go to one, and would be at home and the kids could come in. I did a photoshoot there where he was doing his work out and the kids, then toddlers, were watching him. Family was very important to him.”

Lakers team photographer Andy became friends before Kobe was famous, and after taking millions of photos of NBA action throughout the years, they collaborated on the 2018 book The Mamba Mentality : How I Play – a book exploring Bryant’s success and mindset.

Describing how they first met, Andy said: “He said: ‘I know who you are. I said, 'Really?' Because we'd never met. I thought he was kind of being smart.

"And he said, 'No no, I know who you are because I had all your posters in my room growing up.

"And I'm thinking, 'Who reads the absolute microscopic type on a poster?' I mean, this guy was absolutely obsessed with everything, including that. I was completely blown away.

"He told me later on that he would look at my pictures and other photographers' pictures and dissect them, like he would in a science lab what was going on and how the athlete was moving his body and how the other player was reacting. And unbeknownst to me, he used my photos throughout his career.”

Andy, still grieving the loss of this friend, said: "He was special. I will always be grateful to him, and he will live within me forever.”

Kobe and Gianna were killed alongside seven others – college baseball coach John Altobelli, his wife Keri, their daughter Alyssa, Christina Mauser, Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton. The helicopter pilot Ara Zobayan were also killed.

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