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 Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, was six when
his father Joe moved the family to Italy in 1984 to play seven
seasons with four different teams in the centre, south and
finally the north.
The Bryant family first went to Rieti, a town in central Italy,
and then moved to Reggio Calabria, in the country's toe,
Cireglio in Tuscany, and finally to Reggio Emilia, in the north.
"We always kept two eyes on the ball and two eyes on him," said
one of his father's teammates, Antonio Olivieri, 64.
He remembered the boy as a ball of energy when the family
arrived in Rieti, about 80 km (50 miles) from Rome.
"Kobe was a kid when he was here in Rieti. I remember Joe always
taking him to the gym... he used to climb into the hoops while
we were playing," Olivieri told Reuters.
"When someone fell on the ground, he came onto the court with a
mop to clean up," he added.
The local team, NPC Rieti, published a photo of the young Kobe
on its Twitter account. "You made us dream," it wrote. "We are
proud to have been the first to see you take to the court. We
will never forget Kobe."
In a radio interview in 2011, Bryant revealed his affection for
the country: "Italy will always be close to my heart," he said.
His love for Italy was reflected in the names he chose for his
four daughters - Gianna Maria-Onore, who died with him in
Sunday's crash, Natalia Diamante, Bianka Bella and Capri, who
was born in June 2019.
Bryant was especially fond of Reggio Emilia, where he spent two
years.
"I grew up here. I used to ride my bike here. There were all my
friends, I have many memories, it's special," he said in an
interview with BaskeTime magazine in 2016.
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"Forever one of us," the Reggio Emilia Pallacanestro Reggiana team
wrote on Twitter, posting some photos of Bryant when he played for
the youth team.
"Kobe wasn't known as an NBA star in Reggio Emilia. He was the kid
that all the fans knew and saw at the arena when his father played,"
said youth coach Andrea Menozzi.
Bryant's friends in Cireglio, a small town where the family lived
from 1987 to 1989, were struggling to come to terms with his death.
"One morning at 7, the doorbell rang and I saw Kobe," said childhood
friend Alessia Pierattini, 53, remembering a surprise visit from the
Los Angeles Lakers superstar some seven years ago.
She showed him a photo album that she had put together full of
pictures of when he was a boy taking his First Holy Communion at a
local Roman Catholic Church.
"When we left the house after an hour together, people stopped their
cars because they wanted to see him. He was open to everybody and
took photos in the streets (with them)," she said. She added that
Kobe had told her that he wanted to bring his daughters to live in
Italy.
"I want them to experience what I felt as a child, a reality that
does not exist in America," he told Pierattini.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante in Rome; Editing by Crispian Balmer,
Andrew Heavens and Bill Berkrot)
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