Kobe Bean Bryant was one of the greatest basketball players of all-time. He achieved many milestones that allowed him to enter the Hall of Fame. He has 5 NBA championships, 2 Finals MVP awards, one MVP award, 18 All-Star appearances, and is 4th all-time in points.
One season the “Black Mamba”, Kobe, averaged 35.4 points, 5.3 rebounds, and 4.5 assists in his best season, but didn’t win MVP that season. It was because his team wasn’t great. But he still won MVP in 2008 averaging 28.3 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 6.3 assists.
Back-to-Back champions deserve to be honored. Along with that Kobe, accomplished a three-peat(three in a row). He won Finals MVP Back-to-Back in 2009-2010. He won the NBA Finals 5 times, and was an NBA scoring leader in 2005-2006 & 2006-2007, but wasn’t MVP that season. He did get MVP in the 2007-2008 season, averaging 28.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 5.4 assists.
Every season that he wasn’t a rookie or injured, Kobe wouldn’t score under 17 points a game. Kobe broke a huge record on January 22, 2006, when he scored 81 points. He broke one of Wilt Chamberlain’s records(78 points), to take 2nd in points in a game. To prove that he was the hardest worker, Kobe would make 2,000 shots every day. That was why Kobe Bryant is a legend. R.I.P Kobe.
Bryant started playing basketball when he was three, and the Lakers were his favorite team when he was growing up. When Bryant was six, his father retired from the NBA and moved his family to Rieti in Italy to continue playing professional basketball. After two years, they moved first to Reggio Calabria, then to Pistoia and Reggio Emilia. Kobe became accustomed to his new lifestyle and learned to speak fluent Italian. He was especially fond of Reggio Emilia, which he considered a loving place and where some of his best childhood memories were made. Bryant began to play basketball seriously while living in Reggio Emilia. Bryant’s grandfather would mail him videos of NBA games for Bryant to study. Another source of inspiration was animated European films about sports, from which he learned more about basketball. From 1987 to 1989, his father played for Olimpia Basket Pistoia where he paired with former Detroit PistonsLeon Douglas. Kobe would work at the games as a ball and mop boy and would practice shooting at halftime, with Douglas sharing, “At every one of our games at halftime, it was the Kobe show. He’d get out there and get his shot up. We’d come out of the locker room at halftime and have to chase him off the court.”
Before the 1996 NBA draft, Bryant had worked out in Los Angeles, where he scrimmaged against former Lakers players Larry Drew and Michael Cooper and, according to then-Laker general manager Jerry West, “marched over these people”.
The Lakers were looking to trade their starting center Vlade Divac for a player’s draft rights to free up salary-cap space to make an offer to free-agent center Shaquille O’Neal. Bill Branch, the Charlotte Hornets’ head scout at the time, said that the Hornets agreed to trade their No. 13 pick to the Lakers the day before the draft. Before the trade agreement, the Hornets never considered drafting Bryant. During the draft, the Lakers told the Hornets whom to select minutes before the pick was made.
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