Check out Isabella Escribano’s journey from viral basketball sensation to joining Kobe Bryant’s sports academy and later founding a streetwear company. (6:46)
Three freeways and at least thirty minutes of driving separate film studios in Burbank from Canyon Country, California, and the home of 16-year-old basketball phenom Isabella Escribano. But the movie business has always appreciated its multitalented hyphenates with star power, and only a precious few qualify on all fronts like the high school rising sophomore hailed as “Jiggy Izzy” does.
“No matter what time I can get in the gym on a school night, I always have to get that work in,” said the social media star, streetwear designer and basketball player. “I have goals to accomplish.”
Yes, there are more than a few goals left on the dream board that adorns a wall in Escribano’s bedroom. But consider what she has already done: At 8, Escribano was a pre-adolescent ballhandling sensation on social media with thousands of fans and followers. Later, she was among the youngest players at Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy. And as a 13-year-old street fashion designer, WNBA and NBA stars coveted her cutting-edge creations.
Escribano made so much of it happen before her quinceañera — a low-key event given it took place while she was representing Mexico in the Under-16 FIBA Women’s Americas Championship.
“Nothing has been given to her,” her older brother and basketball mentor, Marco Escribano Jr., said. “Everything she’s had to do, she had to go an extra mile and then another mile after that.”
“My whole life has been around basketball,” Isabella said from her family’s converted garage, where she’s surrounded by hoodies on hangers that feature her WNBA-themed designs. And as stars have been wearing them since 2022, she has been raising her on-court game. “To create all of this is incredible,” she said.
Escribano’s basketball life began with her filming Marco Jr.’s high school games on an iPad. And whenever a tournament ended, little Izzy often could be found standing next to the championship hardware.
“They would have to take the picture,” her mother, Irma, said, “but Isabella was there holding the trophy; she would not want to move. So the coaches got used to it — ‘Just let her be in the picture.'”
Marco had patterned his game after the showstopping skills he saw as an And1 devotee. But when his high school career ended without an opportunity to play at the next level, “I was depressed a little bit,” Marco said. “There’s no plan B.”
Enter Isabella, beseeching her big brother to teach her: “I saw how hard he worked in basketball, and I wanted to do the same thing.”
Marco resisted at first. “I didn’t want her to go through the same pain that I did,” he said. But he came around.
“So you want to do this?”
“Yeah.”
“All right, then let’s go right now.”
Marco wasn’t kidding.
“He decided to take me to the park at 1 in the morning,” Isabella recalled. “He had his car on for lights.”
To hear them describe it, Isabella proved a dedicated student of the game with flair, a buttery foul line jump shot and a sense of fun you couldn’t miss. Marco was a focused teacher and motivator with an eye toward the larger landscape of high-profile hoops: “I started seeing where the game was going. I started seeing the Ball family pop off.”
When he began posting videos of his sister on Instagram and YouTube, the response was all he could have hoped for. Fans and major figures throughout basketball were impressed, and in 2018, the “Izzy has handles for days” raves began.
“For a young female athlete to be able to move and have the type of basketball maturity that she had at that age, it wasn’t common,” Phil Handy, the longtime NBA assistant who spotted Isabella’s skills on social media, said. He began regular workouts with Escribano at a Thousand Oaks gym, and one day, got a text from Kobe Bryant about her.
“[Kobe] said, ‘I want you to bring her down to a workout.’ So I called Marco and said, ‘Hey, where’s Jiggy? Is she sitting down?'”
“Happy New Year, kiddo.”
When then-11-year-old Escribano got that Dec. 31 reply text from Bryant, it seemed to usher in what looked to be an exciting 2020. Months earlier, Bryant had invited her to join him at Mamba Sports Academy, and she had been eager to learn as much as she could, as fast as she could, from the future Hall of Famer.
“I asked him, ‘How many times should I shoot?'” Escribano recalled. “He’s like, ‘Shoot till your arms fall off.'”
Get exclusive access to thousands of premium articles a year from top writers.
Lowe: 7 most underdiscussed NBA teams »
Regrading last year’s MLB trades »
NHL: Way-Too-Early Calder Trophy watch »
More ESPN+ content »
Yet as she sought to apply the off-the-charts skills and ferocious dedication that had made her a social media sensation to 5-on-5 play, Bryant urged Escribano to be patient — with herself and her game. “There are times where he saw me frustrated at certain things,” she said, “and he’d come up to me and say, ‘Brick by brick, Jig — brick by brick.'”
Neither of them knew how little time they’d have to work together. When Bryant died in a helicopter crash later that month, along with his daughter, Gigi, and seven others in January 2020, Escribano said it broke her heart. Yet she found a way to honor Bryant and his support of women’s basketball while continuing to pursue her own dreams.
“This is where I come to think of ideas,” Escribano, seated at a long table inside that onetime garage, said. Computer screens behind her showcase the latest streetwear she has conceptualized and sells on her website, Break the Curse.
“We definitely wanted to make a brand supporting the WNBA,” she said, “’cause there’s not a lot of brands that represent women’s basketball.”
When Brittney Griner was wrongfully detained in Russia, Escribano designed a T-shirt to draw attention to the Phoenix Mercury star’s incarceration, and the “We Are BG” item turned up all over the NBA and WNBA. When WNBA stars such as Escribano’s all-time favorite, Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces, started wearing her creations to games, “Oh my god, I screamed,” Escribano said. “I was screaming all over the house. She just put the cherry on top.”
Life on the court isn’t always so sweet. Last season as a high school freshman, on her way to earning all-league honors, Escribano averaged 17.5 points per game for Santa Clarita’s Canyon High School. She was also dropped, hard, by a screen set late in an intense game against Canyon’s bitter rival. Motionless for minutes on the court, Escribano was taken off on a stretcher and rushed to the ER.
For the first time since that 1 a.m. playground session with Marco, Escribano took a break from basketball. “If I thought about it, I could still feel the hit,” she said. “It traumatized me.”
Yet within the month, the young player with a dream board above her bed returned.
“To get back out there was definitely scary,” Escribano said. “But they can never take the love of the game of basketball away from me.”
This fall, she’ll be at Louisville High School, a sports powerhouse in Woodland Hills. It might be 40 minutes of driving each way, but she has goals to accomplish.