Kobe Bryant never forgot his Philadelphia roots.
“Once I had my mind made up, I didn’t want to wait two weeks and go on the road and lie,” Bryant said in 2015. “That fact that the first road game was here in Philadelphia was the icing on the cake.”
The basketball great died at age 41 on Sunday in a helicopter crash.
When he announced his impending retirement from the NBA in late 2015, Bryant timed it to coincide before what would be his final road game against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Born August 23, 1978 in Philadelphia, Bryant spent his entire pro basketball career with the Los Angeles Lakers. But before entering the NBA Draft in 1996, Bryant attended Lower Merion High School in Ardmore. Reminders of Bryant are everywhere, including the school’s gymnasium, which was named after him.
PennLive reporter Aaron Kasinitz visited Lower Merion High School in the days after Bryant announced his retirement, and everyone had a Kobe story to tell.
“So much of my game was developed in Philadelphia and at Lower Merion High School. ... I have so many great memories there,” Bryant said in 2015.
The hype behind Bryant in the mid-1990s was so great that the Lower Merion Aces would be mobbed outside of gyms.
“He was traveling like a rockstar,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer in 2015. Downer held the same job when Bryant was in school. “Sometimes it would take us 45 minutes to go 100 yards to get to our bus after games because we were dealing with so many people.”
Among the Bryant stories shared, staff members at the school one day noticed what they thought was a large student shooting hoops in the Lower Merion gym. It turned out that it was Bryant, who slipped in unannounced.
The gym was named after Bryant after he donated $411,000 to the school in 2010. Several pieces of Bryant memorabilia were stolen from the school in 2017, including Bryant’s replica high school jersey, signed sneakers and parts of the state championship net from 1996. One of the missing jerseys was returned in 2019.
Read the full stories from 2015:
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