Kobe Bryant would be 45; remember the career of the NBA star!

This Wednesday, the 23rd, the star Kobe Bryant would complete 45 years of life. With the mark of being one of the main names in world basketball, he was honored by the NBA and also by his wife Vanessa. She decided to surprise her eldest daughter, Natalia Bryant, back to school. Vanessa sent the young woman a bunch of flowers with a message on behalf of her late father.

Kobe met Vanessa when he was 21 and she was 17, in November 1999, and in May of the following year, they got engaged. Kobe and Vanessa got married in April 2001, and the couple had four daughters: Natalia, Gianna, Bianka and Capri.

Kobe Bryant was born in Philadelphia, U.Son August 23, 1978. Son of the former basketball player Joe Bryant it’s from Pamela Cox, is the youngest of the couple’s three children. At the age of six, Kobe and his family moved to Italywhen Joe left the NBA to play in the Europeso he learned to speak Italian and Spanish fluently.

In 1991, he returned to the United States and, even without being at a university, caught the attention of NBA scouts. While in high school, he was coached by his father. Even though he wasn’t the first pick in the 1996 draft, he made it clear that he wanted to play in Los Angeles. Thus, he was the thirteenth to be chosen, but, at the age of 17, he signed with the lakers.

Kobe was the youngest player in history to step onto the court for an NBA team and start a game on the court (he would only be surpassed years later by center Andrew Bynum). However, he had few minutes on the field in his first season. Due to his talent, he evolved and conquered more space over the seasons for the Lakers.

In his second season with the club, he was the youngest player to participate in the All-Star Game, and was the highest scorer in the NBA among non-starters. Even missing the beginning of the 1999-00 season, due to a hand injury that kept him out of action for six weeks, he led the Lakers to the best record of the regular season, with 67 wins and 15 losses.

They reached the NBA finals and won the competition against the Indiana Pacers. kobe, Phil Jacksoncoach of the Lakers, and Shaquille O’Neal, the team’s pivot, helped the club win the title in the next two seasons. Kobe was MVP in the 2007-08 season, and helped the Lakers win the NBA again in 2009 and 2010, and was MVP again in both Finals.

With the American Basketball Team, he won gold at the Beijing Olympics, in 2008, and in London, in 2012. In March 2013, Kobe Bryant became the fourth best scorer in the NBA, and a month later he suffered the most serious injury to his his career, when he ruptured his Achilles tendon. He returned in December of the same year, but broke his knee.

Therefore, he only returned to the courts in March 2014. After overcoming injuries and the ups and downs of the sport, he also surpassed the mark of none other than Michael Jordan as the third highest scorer in NBA history, with 32,293 points, while Jordan had 32,292. Kobe announced his retirement from basketball in an open letter in November 2015.

In his last game, he scored a season-high 60 points and became the oldest player to score at least 50 points in an NBA game. During his 20 years playing for the Angelense team, Kobe made 1346 appearances and scored 33643 points, the most in club history. He wore shirt number 8 until the 2006-07 season and number 24 thereafter until the end of his career.

In 2018, Kobe became the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, and the first former professional athlete to be nominated for and win an Oscar, with his short film “Dear Basketball”, a love letter to the sport. But all the beautiful trajectory in basketball ended up being interrupted in a tragic way.

On January 26, 2020, Kobe, Gianna, and seven others, died after the helicopter they were in crashed on the outskirts of Calabasas, Southern California. Kobe was 41 years old and Gianna was 13. The day became one of the saddest for lovers of basketball in the world.