{"id":6669,"date":"2020-01-27T10:06:03","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T09:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/52.30.207.235\/basketball-legend-kobe-bryant-dies-this-is-his-story\/"},"modified":"2020-01-27T10:06:03","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T09:06:03","slug":"basketball-legend-kobe-bryant-dies-this-is-his-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/basketball-legend-kobe-bryant-dies-this-is-his-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Basketball Legend Kobe Bryant Has Passed Away. This Is His Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Yesterday, January 26th, we had to say goodbye to Kobe Bryant. The basketball legend died this Sunday in a helicopter crash along with eight other people who have also died, including his 13-year-old daughter Gianna. In a tribute to one of the greatest stars in the history of the sport, we take a brief look at his unparalleled career. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-65547\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/magefan\/kobe-bryant-foot-district-1.jpg\" alt=\"Kobe Bryant\" width=\"1000\" height=\"679\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kobe Bryant was born in the <strong>United States<\/strong> in <strong>1978<\/strong>, but it was in Italy that he became interested in basketball. He lived in the European country for a few years, until his family returned to the United States. By then, his talent was already evident, with statistics that spoke for themselves: an average of 30.9 points, 12 rebounds and 6.5 assists. In his first team in Philadelphia, the <strong>ACES<\/strong>, he began to stand out covering all positions on the court, becoming the top scorer and surpassing those who were considered the best until then. When he finished high school, he decided to skip college to pursue a professional basketball career. With an undisputable spot among the top <strong>35 McDonald&#8217;s All-American players in 2012<\/strong>, Kobe Bryant made the <strong>NBA draft<\/strong>. Initially selected by the <strong>Charlotte Hornets<\/strong>, the player would soon ask to be transferred to the <strong>Lakers<\/strong>. So he did.<\/p>\n<p>In his first season with the team in Los Angeles, Bryant already proved to be well above any expectations. In 2010, the team extended his contract, and repeated the strategy in 2013. <strong>Kobe Bryant would end up playing for the Lakers from 1996 until 2016, when he announced his retirement, spending almost his entire career on the team<\/strong>. More than enough time to accumulate an ambitious list of awards and unbeatable results. He won the NBA Championship five times, in the 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009 and 2010 seasons; he was a finalist in the 2004 and 2008 seasons and earned five NBA Championship Rings, one less than <strong>Michael Jordan<\/strong>. He is a two-time leading scorer, 18 All-Star appearances, 1 MVP of the regular season, 2 MVP of the NBA Finals and 4 MVP of the All-Star Game. His accomplishments are endless.<\/p>\n<p><div class=\"video-shortcode\"><iframe title=\"Kobe Bryant&#039;s Top 10 Plays of his Career\" width=\"1160\" height=\"653\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jhyANGHDDH8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>AKA <em><strong>Black<\/strong> <strong>Mamba<\/strong><\/em>, Bryant has been without a doubt one of the most complete players in the history of basketball, ranking number 7 on ESPN&#8217;s NBA ranking. Always frustrated by a constant comparison with <strong>Shaquille O&#8217;Neal<\/strong>, the American formed the perfect tandem with Spanish player<strong> Pau Gasol<\/strong>, with whom he won two of the rings for the Lakers in 2009 and 2010. Six years later, due to the increasingly persistent injuries, Kobe Bryant understood it was time to leave his place to make way for the next legend. The reactions of his teammates made it clear that Kobe was unsurpassed not only in basketball. Pau Gasol said goodbye with a public letter: &#8220;My first day with the Lakers, I met the team at The Ritz in Washington, D.C., and at 1:30 in the morning there was a knock on my door. I found out later that Kobe doesn\u2019t sleep much. I sat on the bed, I think, and he sat on the table next to the TV. He welcomed me to the team, and then he told me it was \u201cgo\u201d time. It was winning time&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Not only was the relationship with Pau Gasol or Shaquille O&#8217;Neal a part of history, but also with <strong>Michael Jordan<\/strong>, whom he initially regarded with an almost furious competitiveness. In an interview in which he narrates his first duel with Jordan, Kobe makes clear his sporting ambition. &#8220;I was thinking in my mind, I didn&#8217;t care. I&#8217;m going to destroy this guy. I don&#8217;t care if I&#8217;m 18, I&#8217;m coming for blood. And the first thing he did, they ran a fifth-down sequence in the triangle. He caught the ball in the corner and he made his little pirouette spin that he does and sneaks baseline. I fell for it, and he went by me and dunked it. I remember just laughing to myself all the way up the court. I&#8217;ve seen that move thousands of times and I can&#8217;t believe I just fell for it&#8221;. <strong>Bryant demonstrated an admirable maturity on a personal and professional level<\/strong>, always guided by a pure ambition and motivated by the love he so often showed for his daughters. &#8220;Those time when you get up early&#8230; those times when you stay up late&#8230; when you&#8217;re too tired&#8230; you don&#8217;t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream&#8221;. Kobe said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-65549\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/magefan\/foot-district-daugther-bryant-1.jpg\" alt=\"Kobe and daughter\" width=\"1000\" height=\"771\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Kobe Bryant retired elegantly in 2016, not letting his career die by itself. To end his 20-year legacy as a professional player, Kobe scored 60 points in Los Angeles against the Utah Jazz in a game that is already a historic event. It was by no means his end. Always active and demonstrating his love for basketball, he later developed with Glen Keane a short animated film written and starring himself. <strong>&#8220;Dear Basketball&#8221;, a kind of animated poem based on his farewell to the professional game, even won the Oscar in 2018<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Abt62jcdjkE<\/p>\n<p>The Black Mamba has scored a before and after on the global sports scene. <strong>The numbers 8 and 24 of the dorsal numbers with which he has played in the two periods of his career have become symbols<\/strong>\u00a0recognized for much more than his game records. A world star on and off the court, his untimely death has caused desolation among several generations who have witnessed his historic milestones, among all basketball lovers and among all those who once reveled in the passion, effort and talent of one of the greatest legends in history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, January 26th, we had to say goodbye to Kobe Bryant. The basketball legend died this Sunday in a helicopter crash along with eight other people who have also died,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,63],"tags":[],"powerkit_post_featured":[4,7,5,6,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-6669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-noticias"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6669"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.footdistrict.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=6669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}