Getty Lakers legend Kobe Bryant, middle, with NBA star Julius Erving and Lower Merion High School coach Gregg Downer in Philadelphia in 2015.
If you’ve got $899,900 kicking around and you’re an avid Lakers fan, there’s a home outside Philadelphia that just might interest you—it’s the boyhood home of NBA legend Kobe Bryant on Remington Road in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania.
The house is a five-bedroom Colonial with 3,434 square feet and three-and-a-half bathrooms. It was first listed three days ago by David Wyher of Compass Pennsylvania LLC.
There are custom maple cabinets and marble countertops, along with a fireplace and a back patio. But the most important feature: a basketball hoop in the driveway. And not just any basketball hoop. Here’s how the listing describes it:
Every home has a story to tell and this one is not to be missed. It happens to be the former home of beloved NBA superstar Kobe Bryant. He spent his teenage years living at 1224 Remington and attended Lower Merion High School from 1992-1996. He took the basketball scene by storm and led his high school team to a state championship. The home’s most significant feature is Kobe’s basketball hoop in the driveway where he spent countless hours perfecting his craft.
Kobe Bryant Maintained a Difficult Relationship With Philadelphia
Bryant was killed in a tragic helicopter crash in Calabasas, California, on January 26 along with his daughter, Gianna, and seven others. Bryant, who spent 20 seasons with the Lakers before retiring in 2016, was slated to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, this summer before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The induction has been put off but should happen next year.
The home in Wynnewood is about eight miles from Philadelphia, and about a 25-30 minute drive. Despite his roots there, Bryant has always had a tenuous relationship with the city itself, especially since he spent so much of his youth in Italy, where his father—Joe Bryant, a former player for the Sixers—finished out his basketball career.
That tough relationship softened over time. But in 2001, when Bryant was just 22 years old, the Lakers won the NBA championship, beating the Sixers. At the time, Bryant, who was also undergoing a bitter feud with his parents at the time, ticked off locals in Philly by calling Los Angeles, “my hometown.”
Kobe Bryant: ‘Basketball Became My OUTLET’
In the 2015 documentary called, “Muse,” Bryant included a chapter called, “Wynnewood,” which covered the time around his arrival to the U.S., after his father’s retirement. He spoke about the bitterness he experienced in having to give up the eight years’ worth of friendships he had built up in Italy and the difficulty he had fitting in when he got to Wynnewood.
Bryant wrote, in The Players’ Tribune in 2015:
I was a tall, skinny 13-year-old kid who spoke Italian better than English. I knew very little of American culture and people knew me only as “the son of a former NBA player.” The Wynnewood chapter of my upcoming documentary focuses on how during this time, the game of basketball became more than only a refuge, it became my OUTLET. Basketball became the place where I could channel my frustrations about being different — where I could scream from the top of the mountain and allow myself to be heard.
Now, a piece of that refuge is up for sale, for a little less than a million bucks.
READ NEXT: This Rockets Defensive Number Is a Problem for Anthony Davis