Reggio Emilia, school groups and fans meet to remember Kobe Bryant

The homage of the city

next to the basketball hall that saw Kobe’s father, Joe, play in the ranks of the Reggiana Basketball, and in ‘Largo Kobe and Gianna Bryant’: a year ago, on the first anniversary of his death, Reggio Emilia, the first city to do so , entitled a square to his father and daughter. At the beginning of the 90s that child who would become the Black Mamba shot the first baskets in Reggio, following his father in his career that led him to move from city to city. Kobe spent three years here: the years of early adolescence, in which you begin to understand who you are and who you want to be. And he knew it, that he would become a champion. He was crying, in the locker room, after a knee injury, and his friends from Reggio didn’t understand so much anger: “So he won’t be able to go to the NBA”, said Kobe as a young boy. Soft giggles, disbelief among the other children. But Kobe had a dream and with some of those Reggio children he remained a friend, a true friend, throughout his short life.

Since we inaugurated it, piazza Kobe and Gianna Bryant has become a place where people come from outside Reggio, sometimes even from the States visiting, like last summer – says the mayor Luca Vecchi- The exhibition with the small Kobe blow-ups in the our city is visited by many, young people and not only. Tonight we will once again illuminate the Calatrava bridges with the colors of the Lakers. What we wrote in the title plate, “Kobe and Gianna reggiani forever”, is more than ever valid even today. The city has not forgotten them and will continue to remember them in the future with other initiatives.

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