Kobe Bryant Early Life

Kobe Bryant was born the only son of Joe and Pam Bryant. At the age of six, he, his two sisters and his parents moved to Italy, where his father began playing professional basketball. While living there, he gradually became accustomed to the lifestyle and subsequently learned to speak Italian fluently. In 1991, the Bryants moved back to the United States. After a spectacular high school career in the Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion, at Lower Merion High School, Bryant achieved national recognition as a prodigious basketball talent. While his SAT score of 1080 would have ensured his basketball scholarship to various top-tier colleges, Bryant eventually scrapped his original plans of continuing on to college by making the leap from high school directly to the NBA, a bold but controversial decision made by the then 17-year-old, the first guard ever to bypass college basketball.