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From six to 13 years old, between 1984 and 1991, little Kobe Bryant lived in Italy, where he learned to play basketball while still going from city to city of the peninsula - Rieti, Reggio Calabria, Pistoia, Reggio Emilia - to his father , Joe 'Jellybean' Bryant , who spent there a long and quite successful career end. They were seven fundamental years in the formation of any player, and they were given even more attention when Joe explained in 2015: "If Kobe has become the player he is today, he owes it mainly to Italian basketball. In America he jumps and you run, but few really know the basics: in Italy he learned the basics of this sport. "

He learned basketball and life, we could add, because away from public parks in Philadelphia, young Kobe knew a new world, learned perfectly Italian and entered that hybrid race, and not yet so nourished, of culturally Euro-American players, as in good measure He is also today his soul friend, his 'little brother' Pau Gasol .

Thus, it is striking that a boy who did not go to the University one day - he entered the draft directly at age 17 after finishing his time at a Philadelphia high school - showed so much interest in culture, She expressed herself so well in public and, the day after she retired, she launched a film production company with which a year later she won her first Oscar. The influence of Gasol is unquestionable; that of being raised in Europe, even more.

In his book An Italian named Kobe , the journalist Andrea Barocci wrote that Kobe and his older sisters Sharia and Shaya frequented primary school in Rieti, as their parents considered the idea of ​​targeting their children in the American school of Rome absurd and that they had to cover a long journey every day. "While Father Joe inflamed Rieti's audience with his incredible performance percentages (but he didn't even think about going down to defend when he touched him ...), young Kobe quickly learned the language imbued with local culture and didn't miss a chance to catch a ball and throw in the basket. "

Kobe was, therefore, one of the first universal players, and probably because of that cosmopolitan and open character he has been much more popular than other contemporary figures of his. And that's why his death has shaken Los Angeles, Rome or Madrid equally.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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