Kobe Bean Bryant was a skilled Basketball shooting guard who played his entire professional career for the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association, during which he won five championships and set franchise records for points, games, minutes, and steals. These accolades have led fans of the sport to consider Bryant one of the best to ever play the game, and playing his whole career in Los Angeles helped to make him one of the most popular sports players ever.
Praised for his one-track determination and work ethic and heralded as the heir to Michael Jordan, the son of former NBA player Joe Bryant was drafted #13 overall in 1996 straight out of high school by the Lakers (via the Hornets). Nicknamed "the Black Mamba", Kobe became a leader and face of the Lakers while still a teenager and set a lot of the league's "youngest-to" records until LeBron's arrival. Kobe had a very strained relationship with his teammate and the Lakers then-higher profile star Shaquille O'Neal, but they managed to achieve three consecutive championships from 2000-02, the first since Jordan's Bulls.
After a few down years following Shaq's departure and a very public controversy in which Bryant was charged with sexual assault (the charges were later dropped after a settlement and a public apology), he quickly bounced back to his former on-court dominance, winning league MVP in 2008 after leading the NBA in scoring the prior two seasons. During the short time where he had to lead the Lakers on his own, he ended up scoring the second-largest amount of points in a game for an NBA player with 81 against the Raptors in 2006; this remains the highest scoring performance you can actually watch, as Wilt Chamberlain posted his record 100-point game in 1962 without any video cameras present.note Bryant won two more rings in '09 and '10, earning Finals MVP for both, and won Olympic gold in '08 and '12.
Eventually, Bryant's supporting cast and his own performance began to decline. His final season of 2015–16 marked his 20th with the Lakers, breaking the league record for longest single-team tenure (later surpassed by Dirk Nowitzki with the Dallas Mavericks). While the Lakers went through the franchise's worst season ever, Kobe continued to put on a show, going out in style with a 60-point performance in his final game. He was the first player in the history of any sport to have two separate numbers retired by the same team; the Lakers retired the #8 he wore for his first 10 seasons and the #24 he wore for his last 10.
Kobe remained a major face of basketball in the years after his retirement, including becoming the only pro athlete to win an Oscar for his autobiographical animated short "Dear Basketball". He was also a major advocate for women's and girls' basketball, spurred by his daughter Gianna's interest in the sport. Tragically, Kobe, Gianna, and seven others (including two of Gianna's teammates) were killed in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020, just two months before he was announced as a Hall of Fame inductee. His death shook the basketball world: The NBA postponed the Lakers' next game, and the teams that played from the day of his death onwards honored him by deliberately forcing a 24-second shot clock violation or an 8-second back-court violation on their first possession, in reference to his jersey numbers.
Kobe appeared in 18 NBA All-Star Games (tied for third behind only fellow Laker legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and LeBron James) and won game MVP in four of them (tied with Bob Pettit for most). In recognition of those accomplishments, the league renamed the All-Star MVP award in his honor and adopted a change to the game's format specifically to honor him, adding Kobe's second number of 24 to the leading team's (or tied teams') score to set a target score at the end of the third quarter.
Bryant was featured on the cover of all three installments of the NBA Courtside video game series. He was also featured on the cover of NBA 2K 10 during his career, a special edition of 17 after his retirement, and multiple editions of 21 after his passing, as well as on the cover of NBA 07 and 09: The Inside. He had a brief and mostly unsuccessful rap career and appeared in cameos on multiple TV shows and films As Himself. His biggest impacts on popular culture outside of his basketball success are either his "Mamba Mentality" work ethic mindset—or his real name, which almost immediately became shorthand for any unlikely distance shot. Expect any American (or Italian—Kobe was partly raised in Italy, spoke fluent Italian, and has an enduring fanbase there) tossing trash into a waste basket to let out a yell of "Kobe!"
