Born and raised in Philadelphia, Kobe Bryant started playing basketball at the tender age of three years old. Through his triumphs and tribulations he has been compared to his idols and holds incredible merit in the basketball community, nicknamed The Black Mamba, after 20 years playing ball, the NBA has seen it's final days on Bryant dominating the court, but there is so much more than meets the eye in his story.
Kobe 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 has 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. He would also earn negative media exposure with an incident involving a young girl in 2003 that would hurt his reputation irreparably.