The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do.
- Kobe Bryant
About Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryant was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Bryant won five NBA championships, was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth in league all-time regular season and postseason scoring. The son of former NBA player Joe Bryant, he was born in Philadelphia and partly raised in Italy. Recognized as the top American high-school basketball player while at Philadelphia suburb Lower Merion, Bryant declared for the 1996 NBA draft and was selected by the Charlotte Hornets with the 13th overall pick; he was then traded to the Lakers.
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NBA player
Bryant was born in Philadelphia, the youngest of three children and the only son of Pamela Cox Bryant and former NBA player Joe Bryant. He was also the maternal nephew of NBA player John "Chubby" Cox. His parents named him after the famous beef of Kobe, Japan, which they saw on a restaurant menu. He gave himself the nickname "Black Mamba" in the mid-2000s, and the epithet became widely adopted by the general public. He won gold medals on the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic teams. In 2018, he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the film Dear Basketball (2017).
An inspiration to the world
Bryant was called "one of the greatest players in the history of our game" by NBA commissioner Adam Silver, and The New York Times wrote that he had "one of the most decorated careers in the history of the sport." Reuters called him "arguably the best player of his generation", while both Sporting News and TNT named him their NBA player of the decade for the 2000s. In 2008 and again in 2016, ESPN ranked him the second-greatest shooting guard of all time after Jordan. Players including Kevin Durant, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade, and Derrick Rose called Bryant their generation's version of Jordan.
