Kobe Bryant Research Paper

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Research Paper Kobe Bryant is a basketball superstar who has been playing for the Los Angeles Lakers since 1996. When at the age of eighteen he became the youngest player in the history of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Bypassing college, Bryant moved straight from high school to the NBA, a feat accomplished by only twenty-seven other players since the league was founded in 1946. During his professional career Bryant has won nearly every honor associated with the sport of basketball, including being consistently named an all-star, being chosen the league's most valuable player, and helping the Lakers to win five NBA championships. The youngest of three children born to Joe and Pam Bryant, Kobe Bryant was born in Philadelphia in 1978 on August 23, 1978. The Lakers press guide said his parents named him after a type of steak they saw on a restaurant menu shortly before he was born. Bryant's father was in the midst of a sixteen-year professional basketball career that took the family from Philadelphia, to San Diego, Houston, and then to Italy. When not traveling with his team, Joe played sports with his children, teaching them his moves. Kobe proved to be a particularly apt student, and he adored his father. Said Bryant in the New York Times, "Other kids don't have a father. I don't have anything in common with them. My father's my best friend. Those kids say I lead a Beaver Cleaver life. I don't care." Kobe was five years old when his father left the NBA and moved the family to Pistoia, Italy. There the elder Bryant competed eight more years in the Italian Professional Basketball League. Since no one in the Bryant family could speak Italian at first, the bonds between them grew even closer as they struggled with learning another language. "We didn't have anybody to depend on but our family. We had to stick together," Bryant remembered in the Riverside,

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