Unit1-Part2-Reading

Kobe Bryant NBA superstar Kobe Bryant was a star player in the NBA League.

He is one of the best players in basketball history.

He played for the Los Angeles Lakers for 20 years.

Kobe was born in 1978.

His father was a professional basketball player too.

When Kobe was six years old, the family moved to Italy.

They stayed there for seven years.

Kobe started playing basketball at age four.

He loved basketball and he watched the videos of all NBA games.

His favorite team was the Lakers and Magic Johnson was his favorite player.

He also learned to play soccer in Italy and picked up Italian.

He speaks it very well now.

The Bryant's moved back to the USA when Kobe was 13.

Kobe played in his high school team and made the team the state champion.

He was the top school player in the US.

Kobe's school grades were very good, but he didn't want to attend college.

He wanted to be an NBA player.

He finished high school in 1996.

He joined the LA Lakers immediately.

The next year, he won the NBA Slam Dunk contest.

He was looking forward to playing in the All -Star game,

so he got very happy when it happened in 1998.

He won four NBA All -Star Awards in later years.

With the Lakers, he won three NBA championships between 2000 and 2002

and two more in 2009 and 2010.

He has two Olympic gold medals.

He won them in 2008 and 2012.

From 2013 to 2015, Kobe Bryant couldn't play in some of the games

because he had many injuries.

So he retired from his career as a basketball player at the end of the 2015 -2016 season.

This disappointed his fans.

He said goodbye to basketball lovers after his last game on April 13, 2016.