How growing up in Italy for 7 years turned Kobe Bryant into a star

In 1984, when Kobe Bryant was 6, his father, Joe, uprooted him and his family to Italy to eke out a few more paychecks after an eight-year NBA career.

A 6-foot-9 forward, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant had played for the Philadelphia 76ers, the San Diego Clippers and the Houston Rockets, and had now accepted an offer to play for Sebastani Rieti, based in the hilltop town of Rieti, around 50 miles from Rome. The club found him a cottage with a garden and gave him a new BMW, too. They even erected a basketball hoop on the outside wall for young Kobe to use.

The change still came as a shock to young Kobe, who left his home in Houston, Texas, along with his mother, Pam, and his older sisters, Sharia and Shaya.

“I knew it was going to be different, that the culture was different,” he later recalled. “The first time we went in our house and turned on the TV, there was an Italian cartoon, and me and my sisters were rolling. We were dying. It was on in Italian but they had the same cartoon in America. It was the same exact cartoon, but it had just had Italian words.

Kobe Bryant spent his early years in Italy. The experience shaped his mind and style forever.Twitter

“It was weird, man. We were tripping, man.”

And yet, Kobe’s early days in Italy helped forge his future as a superstar, writes Mike Sielski in “The Rise — Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality” (St. Martin’s Press), out Tuesday. Sielski’s interviews with more than 100 people who knew Kobe as well as long-hidden interview transcripts with the late star, some recorded when he was a teen, reveal “the essence of the man before he truly became a man,” he writes.

Bryant lived in Rieti, Italy, with his family and grew up watching his dad play in the Italian basketball league.Getty Images/EyeEm

On Sundays, Kobe would watch his dad play for his new Italian team, often helping out by mopping the sweat off the court during intervals. A clever kid, he cut his first sponsorship deal with the owner of Joe’s second club in Italy, Olimpia Pistoia, to wear a sweatshirt branded with their business when he cleaned — as long as they bought him a new red bicycle.

Once he wiped down the court, he often picked up a basketball and dazzled the crowd with his own “Kobe Show,” only leaving the court when the game officials kicked him off. “There he was, mimicking what he had just watched, dribbling between his legs, practicing his jumper, heaving shots from too far out, a miniature version of Joe,” writes Sielski.

Joe Bryant graced the NBA courts for eight years, playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, the San Diego Clippers and the Houston Rockets.NBAE via Getty Images
“The arena crowd would stay put and stare, and it never bothered the boy. The game officials would have to kick him off the court so they could restart the game.”

Settled in a new school, Kobe and his older sisters learned to speak fluent Italian within months of moving there — including all the expletives. And, as a black family living in Europe, the Bryants were considered “both curiosities and celebrities,” Sielski writes. Whenever they took a trip into town, strangers would buy them coffee or pick up their check at a café, Kobe said.

In Italy, young Kobe (with sisters Sharia and Shaya) realized the value Italians put on family.Instagram
“People treat others as equals there,” he said in a 1996 interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They don’t mistrust each other. They say hello when they see you on the street. And family — family is big there.”

The Bryant family also developed deeper bonds, becoming a much stronger unit with his mother, Pam, the household’s true leader, Sielski writes.

When he returned to the US at 13, Kobe became an instant standout on his Philadelphia school’s basketball team.Iconic Auctions/Splash/SplashNews.com

It was also where Joe came to realize the true value of family, says the author, after a past scandal nearly destroyed the dad’s marriage and career.

In 1976, Bryant was playing for the Sixers when he was caught in a parked car with an old girlfriend, Linda Salter, 21, in the Fairmount Park West area of Philadelphia. When police asked him for his license, he sped off, and crashed into a road sign before clipping two other cars and plowing into a wall. When police searched the car, they found two plastic bags, both containing cocaine.

Kobe’s mom, Pam, was a strong Catholic and stood by Joe during turbulent times.REUTERS

Bryant was charged with resisting arrest, reckless driving and drug possession but was later acquitted on all charges by the presiding judge, who ruled the vehicle search was illegal. Meanwhile, Pam stood by Joe.

‘The other nine players started crying and their parents started screaming . . .’

Author Mike Sielski on young Kobe Bryant’s early domination on the basketball court against the Italian competition

“She was a strong, Black, Catholic woman, and a married couple stayed together. End of explanation,” Sielski writes.

Back in Italy, life was a revelation for Joe. Gone were the endless flights and nights spent in hotels away from home. Now, he could play once a week — Kobe would often accompany him on games on the road — and always get back to the Bryant home afterwards.

Kobe said learning the fundamentals in Italy gave him a leg up on the competition. He was drafted by the Lakers in 1996 at the age of 17.AP

“I’ve become a family man,” he told The New York Times in 1985. “In the US, I was more of a traveling man.”

Soon Kobe was recruited to play for the junior teams at his dad’s club, often playing against boys two or three years older. And Joe was usually there, courtside, to see his son flourish during the seven years the Bryants lived in the country.

“He dribbled and shot and shot and dribbled and scored so many points – scored the first ten points in his first game – that the other nine players started crying and their parents started screaming to get this spoiled little scuro off the court,” Sielski writes.

Kobe also forged his famously relentless work ethic in Italy. Not only did he hit the gym at 6 a.m. when the rest of his junior team turned up at 9 a.m., he often played through the pain barrier. On one occasion, having broken his dominant right hand, Kobe caught the ball with his weaker left and still made a three-pointer, Sielski writes.

In 2001, Kobe married Vanessa Laine and they had four daughters together, including Gianna (far right), who died beside him in a 2020 helicopter crash.Lumeimages/REX

In 1992 Joe Bryant retired from playing basketball. The family moved back to the States when Kobe was 13, settling in Lower Merion in Montgomery County, Philadelphia. One of the principal reasons for returning to Philly, Joe explained, was that he didn’t want his children to forget how to speak English. But Kobe struggled to readjust. He didn’t know any of the new slang kids were using and he didn’t have the shared cultural references in TV or music to help him engage with other teens.

Even the clothes he brought back from Italy made him the subject of ridicule. On the school baseball team photo, for example, there are 18 students, all wearing baseball uniforms with mitts in hand — except one. Standing to the far right is Kobe, in a warm coat and a multicolored sweater over a white dress shirt buttoned to the top. “He’s the one who doesn’t quite belong there,” writes Sielski.

Kobe Bryant was memorialized in Italy on the first anniversary of his death. A square and stone were named after the NBA star and his daughter, Gianna, in Reggio Emilia, Italy.Roberto Brancolini/IPA/Shutterstock

Still, the experience abroad shaped Kobe for the better. “By growing up in Italy,” he reflected, according to Sielski, “I learned to play basketball the right way through a teaching of fundamentals first.”

At Lower Merion HS, Kobe led the school’s basketball team, the Aces, to their first state championship in 53 years. After that, Bryant had his pick of colleges. His SAT score of 1,080 was not too shabby either. But, at 17, Kobe decided to go straight from high school into the NBA, becoming only the sixth player in league history to do so. His parents signed his three-year, $3.5 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers as he was still not old enough to do it himself.

Kobe Bryant warms up with daughter, Gianna, during the NBA All-Star Game in 2016.Getty Images

Kobe Bryant’s parents attended the emotional memorial service for their late son and granddaughter.YouTube

Kobe Bryant and his father show their bond in a 1996 portrait.NBAE via Getty Images

A 20-year career with the Lakers netting him more than $320 million in salary alone followed. Bryant won five NBA championships and was an 18-time All-Star (second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 19). He was also the first player in NBA history to score at least 30,000 career points and make 6,000 career assists, and won two Olympics gold medals with the US basketball team.

In 2001, aged 21, he married Vanessa Laine, 18, and the couple had four daughters together – but his personal life wasn’t without its problems. While Bryant had learned the importance of family from his father, he too would find himself engulfed in a scandal when, in 2003, he was arrested for sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman. They case was settled out of court. Like Pamela Cox Bryant in 1976, Vanessa Bryant stood by her man.

Then, on January 26, 2020, tragedy struck.

Kobe Bryant alongside his daughter Gianna and seven others were killed when their helicopter crashed in Calabasas, Calif. Kobe was 41; Gianna only 13. Just as Joe had coached young Kobe, so too had Kobe been coaching the girl they called “Gigi.”

When he was playing in Italy in the 1980s, Joe once told a teammate about a prophecy his grandmother had made. She said “that someone would come along who would change the entire structure and direction of the family, who would accomplish great things and allow the family’s members to live new lives,” writes Sielski.

“I know it’s not me,” said Bryant, before pointing to his son. “But it might be him.”