At around 10 a.m. Pacific Time today, retired NBA basketball star Kobe Bryant and four others were killed in a helicopter crash near Calabasas, California. The helicopter was reportedly Bryant's own. He had recently been in his native Philadephia to watch LeBron James pass him for third place on the NBA's all-time scoring list.
Kobe Bean Bryant was born on August 23, 1978 in Philadephia to former NBA player Joe Bryant and Pamela Cox Bryant, whose brother John "Chubby" Cox also played professional basketball. He was named after Kobe beef, which his parents saw on a restaurant menu. When Bryant was six, his father moved the family to Rieti, Italy and eventually to the city of Reggio de Emilia. In Italy, Bryant learned to play basketball and to speak Italian. In 1991, Joe Bryant retired from basketball in Europe and moved his family back to the United States and the Philadelphia area.
After playing for Lower Merion High School in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore, Bryant became only the sixth player to go directly from high school to the NBA and was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. During his first NBA season of 1996-1997, he started out as a substitute for the team's two starting guards, becoming the youngest player to ever play in an NBA game. He would see more playing time during his second year, when he led all non-starters in scoring average. He would become a starter at guard during his third season, and would continue as a regular for the rest of his career, which would end with the 2015-2016 season, and which was entirely with the Lakers. (The above link includes all his stats.) Besides playing in the NBA, Bryant was also on the teams that won gold medals at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012.
During the summer of 2003, Bryant was in Eagle, Colorado when he was accused of sexual assault by a hotel employee and arrested. Because she refused to testify at his trial, the criminal case was dropped, but she filed a lawsuit which was settled privately. He always insisted that the encounter was consensual. As a result of the accusation, he lost two endorsement contracts.
Besides basketball, Bryant was involved in music, television, philanthropy and business. His book The Mamba Mentality: How I Play was published in 2018. Bryant was married to the former Vanessa Laine, with whom he had four daughers. According to some sources, his daughter Gianna was also on the helicopter when it crashed.
Read more at CBS Sports, the New York Post, ABC News, the Los Angeles Times and ESPN.
No comments:
Post a Comment