Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships, appeared in 18 All-Star Games and banked an NBA MVP trophy.

But he captured a title for which there is no fancy plaque, ceremony or designated corner in the Hall of Fame.

He will always be the NBA’s first father.

In today’s league, fatherhood has become an integral part of player culture: a source of pride that matches a spectacularly sharp jumper or an insane handle. It’s common for the league’s biggest stars to wax poetic about the transformative nature of raising children and have their mini scions sit courtside.

In 2015, Steph Curry melted hearts and angered some purists when he allowed his precocious toddler daughter Riley to sit on his lap during a postgame press conference. Such tender moments between hoop stars and their offspring can, and often do, send social media into a blubbering puddle of mushy, fawning retweets and likes.

But a lot of that wouldn’t have happened without Kobe’s public paternal touch. As the bridge from the Michael Jordan era when the game was a machismo-fueled, hard-nosed, all business enterprise to the current family-friendly LeBron James version, Kobe made fatherhood look effortlessly cool and infinitely important.

And while the world mourns Kobe, the basketball star, the endless photographs and videos of Bryant being papa bear to his four daughters — Natalia, 17, the late Gianna, 13, Bianka, 3 and Capri, who was born in June — paint a more complete picture of his contributions to players who came up behind him and idolized him.

The 41-year-old had no male heir, but he seemed particularly proud and protective of his crew of “Mambacitas.”

He was an unabashed girl dad.

When Gianna, nicknamed Gigi, started playing basketball competitively, he would share highlights that showcased her talent and zest for the game without being exploitative. In retirement, he became her coach and the two morphed from a simple father-daughter pair to a dynamic hoops duo — traveling to games and hobnobbing with top NBA stars, including Trae Young and Luka Doncic, and women’s college players, such as Oregon star Sabrina Ionescu, who became friendly with them. In December, a video went viral of Kobe breaking down part of a game to Gigi, as she finished her father’s sentence and he nodded with delight.

Perhaps his most poignant sentiment about raising girls came during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. Speaking about Gigi’s aspirations to play in the WNBA, Kobe acknowledged the fallacy that suggested his legacy wasn’t complete in the hands of a female. But Gigi, he noted, had inherited his legendary competitive streak and swagger.

“The best thing that happens is when we go out and fans come up to me, and she’ll be standing next to me … They’ll be like, ‘You gotta have a boy, have somebody carry on the legacy.’ … She’s like, ‘Oh, I got this!’ ”

Kobe talking about Gianna literally just broke my heart pic.twitter.com/bID5k7Gvn6

— Jimmy Randazzo (@JimmyRandazzo) January 26, 2020

That small snippet resonated for me, and surely many other girls, who grew up playing sports with an adoring dad who also wore a coach’s hat.

The guy who taught us the game, treated us like equals and championed us was reflected in Kobe.

Sadly, fathers don’t always get the credit they deserve when it comes to raising strong females. But Kobe Bryant was the ultimate example of that very special Daddy Daughter dynamic.