Kobe Bryant was born in Philadelphia to Joe Bryant and Pamela Cox Bryant and had two elder sisters named Sharla and Shaya. He fell in love with basketball “from the moment he started rolling his dad’s tube socks and shooting imaginary game-winning shots.” From an early age, Bryant played basketball and football and was a fan of the basketball team ‘Los Angeles Lakers’ and the football team ‘AC Milan.’ He played basketball at Lower Merion High School and won them a state championship after 53 years. Bryant was named Pennsylvania Player of the Year and got attention from college recruiters in the process.
Bryant wrote the poem “Dear Basketball” in 2015 and narrated a short film of the poem two years later. His work won an Academy Award for the best animated short film and in 2018 Bryant published the book The Mamba Mentality: How I Play which explained his approach to basketball and the nickname he put upon himself when he played, “The Black Mamba.” Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant were among a group of nine people going to a girls basketball game in a helicopter when it crashed into a hillside, killing all the people aboard. Over the course of his lifetime, Kobe Bryant had a major impact on the people around him. He didn’t just win everyone’s hearts by playing basketball, but all the other smaller things too. Kobe Bryant was a legend.

Works CIted:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kobe-Bryant
https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/dear-basketball
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/01/us/kobe-bryant-in-his-own-words-trnd/index.html
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/kobe-bryant-3958.php
https://theundefeated.com/features/chronicling-the-career-and-life-of-kobe-bryant/