How a tiny basketball court in Italy helped mold Kobe Bryant into an NBA legend

(CNN) — Nestled in a peaceful corner of the quaint Italian city of Reggio Emilia sits a tiny playground with basketball hoops glued on opposing walls. The playing surface is worn, bicycles are propped up around its perimeter and the spire of a small local church pokes over the top of the surrounding buildings.

Although beautiful, it’s at first unassuming and certainly not somewhere you would link to the glamorous world of the NBA.

But this small playground in an idyllic pocket of Italy was once the second home of one of the greatest basketball players in history, Kobe Bryant.

Bryant spent many of his formative years in Italy, as his father Joe decided to take his playing career to Europe after leaving the Houston Rockets in 1983.

Just six at the time, a young Bryant was thrown into a new culture, a new language and a new way of life – but it was a new world he quickly adapted to and eventually fell in love with.

Constantly following his father to different teams across the country, the family’s last stop in Italy was in Reggio Emilia, where Bryant met friend and former teammate Marco Ferraroni.

Ferraroni features in CNN’s new Original Films and Series documentary “Kobe: The Making of a Legend,” which marks five years since Bryant’s death.

In the first episode, he explains how the pair played together at the local youth team for two years, with Bryant playing with boys a year older because he was already too good for those his own age.

Even when there was no organized team practice, Ferraroni remembers spending “eternal afternoons” playing with Kobe on that small court nestled next to the church, with the local priest permitting them access during the day.

“We spent hours and hours there. One of my memories of Kobe is that he was always there,” Ferraroni said.

“I remember that Kobe was always available to play basketball, even for 1v1, just spending all afternoon playing 1v1 or a three-point competition. He was always there for basketball.”

Ferraroni recalls a young Bryant playing a lot like his father, focusing on scoring three pointers which was “peculiar” for Italian players at his age.

But while the future NBA legend was physically smaller than much of his competition, what stands out most for Ferraroni was the American’s mentality, a trait which would later become world famous.

“I remember a very long Saturday afternoon playing with him,” Ferraroni recalled.

“We played all afternoon and it was very difficult to leave because Kobe didn’t want to leave having lost the last game – I was one year older, and it happened that sometimes he lost.

“And it was like: ‘No, no, no, play one more, play one more. I want to win. Play one more.’ So it was kind of a never-ending afternoon playing with him.”

Obsessed with basketball at a young age, Bryant didn’t have much interest in school while living in Reggio Emilia.

His close childhood friend Giada Maslovaric remembers his first day at his new school – she was tasked with keeping an eye on him and the pair soon started socializing in their spare time.

Hours would be spent cycling through the city’s cobbled streets, getting its world-famous ice-cream and dreaming of the future.

“Kobe did not care for gossip, for shallow things, but when he laughed, he would do so genuinely, so he was good company,” Maslovaric told CNN.

Maslovaric never had an interest in sport, let alone basketball, opting instead to focus her attention on school work. While their focuses didn’t align, Maslovaric thinks the pair became such good friends because of their shared passion and determination to achieve.

“He would always say that he’d play for the NBA,” she said. “Whenever the topic was mentioned, he was not joking.”

“We laughed a lot, but that joke was not funny to him, he would not play along with it. I was the only person laughing, he’d simply respond ‘I’ll get there.’”

Return to Italy

Kobe would be proved right. After leaving Italy to head back to the US, it wasn’t long before the youngster started making noise, becoming the first ever guard to be drafted straight out of high school by the Charlotte Hornets and joining the Los Angeles Lakers via trade in 1996.

Maslovaric watched on from afar as her friend morphed into a global sensation, a world champion, a father and a husband.

They would meet again, though, much later in life in 2003.

Bryant visited Reggio Emilia and had gone looking for Maslovaric at her mother’s clothing store. Maslovaric’s mother rang her and passed the phone over to Bryant. The pair agreed to meet up two days later.

Speaking in CNN’s documentary, Maslovaric recalls some of the deep conversations she shared with the five-time NBA champion when the pair met again. She was fascinated with what his life was now like and whether he enjoyed the fame.

In the documentary, she reveals that it seemed to her that Reggio Emilia was the last place that Bryant could be normal and the process of becoming a superstar came at a cost.

There was an element of isolation in his life, she said, with Bryant not knowing who he could trust.

But it was a price that she thinks the boy who used to play on that small court on an Italian playground was willing to pay, all for his love of basketball.

“The description that I got was one of a beautiful, stunning cage, made not of gold, but rather of platinum, of diamond, which was his later life,” she said, referring to a conversation she had with him.

“(That’s) the life he chose because that cage allowed him to feel those extremely powerful feelings that he felt as soon as he’d step onto the court. And all of the bars, in spite of being beautiful and golden, disappeared at that moment, it was worth it.”

It would be the last time the pair met. Like millions around the world, Maslovaric watched with despair as the news spread of Bryant’s death in 2020.

Like her, the city of Reggio Emilia was rocked, its inhabitants left mourning their adopted son.

In the years that followed, a plaza in the city was named in honor of Bryant and his daughter Gianna as the community worked together to heal the “collective wound.”

For Maslovaric, the murals and tributes to Kobe are bittersweet. On one hand, it serves as a constant reminder that she’ll never see her childhood friend again. But, on the other, she understands the want and need to honor Bryant given his lasting legacy in the city.

“Kobe, I believe, has left to Reggio the opportunity for every single child, boy or girl, with a dream and a regular life, to be able to achieve that dream,” Maslovaric added, speaking of Bryant’s legacy.

“And I think that’s something extraordinary.”

The-CNN-Wire
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