Kobe Bryant

📍Wynnewood, Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, USA

“I was born in Philadelphia in August 1978, the son of Joe Bryant, a former NBA player known as Jellybean, and Pam, and I spent most of my childhood in Italy, where my father played professional basketball. We lived in small towns like Rieti, Reggio Calabria, Pistoia and Reggio Emilia, and I grew up speaking Italian, playing football and learning the fundamentals of basketball in Italian gyms, with my two older sisters, Sharia and Shaya. My grandfather sent me tapes of NBA games from America, and I studied every move. In 1991, when my father's playing career ended, we moved back to the Philadelphia area, settling in Wynnewood, a leafy suburb on the Main Line west of the city. I was thirteen, and coming back to America was a culture shock; I spoke Italian, my slang was out of date, and I felt like an outsider. I enrolled at Lower Merion High School in Ardmore, and I threw myself into basketball, arriving at the gym before dawn and leaving long after everyone else. I also played in the Philadelphia summer leagues against older, tougher players, and I learned to compete in that city's playgrounds. I made the varsity team as a freshman, when we won only four games, but by my senior year in 1996 we won the state championship. I took the singer Brandy to my prom, and announced at a press conference in the Lower Merion gym that I was going straight to the NBA. I spent my whole career with the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five championships. Lower Merion's gym now bears my name.”

Sources: foxla.com whyy.org whyy.org Wikipedia: Kobe Bryant