The unlikely bond of Kobe Bryant and Tamika Catchings

There are two American families standing inside the Colosseum in Rome. The year is 1986.

A young boy in a powder blue shirt, unbuttoned to expose a long, gold chain draped around his neck.

A little girl in braids and a white, flowered blouse.

Two seemingly typical kids and their families. Two kids who were not typical at all.

That young boy is Kobe Bryant. The little girl is Tamika Catchings. They were together overseas nearly three decades ago as their fathers, former NBA players, finished out their careers playing basketball in Italy.

"Could you imagine if somebody traveled back in time to that moment and went up to us and said, 'Hey, you two are going to be some of the best basketball players to ever pick up a basketball?' " Bryant says. "We'd be like, 'What?' "

"Yeah, right," says Catchings.

But they would have been right.

Those two families in Italy, the Bryants and the Catchings, had with them two children who forged an unlikely and little-known friendship. They had two kids who would become, arguably, among the best to ever play basketball. Bryant, who is out for the season after rotator cuff surgery, is a five-time NBA champion and 17-time NBA All-Star. Catchings is a WNBA champion and nine-time WNBA All-Star. Both are surely headed to the Hall of Fame.

"I'm telling you, it was something in the pasta," says Bryant. "It was something in the pasta that year."

"Or the pizza," says Catchings. "Remember the big old pizzas?"

This conversation, this reminiscing between Bryant and Catchings is taking place inside a locker room. Behind them hang their jerseys, another coincidence — both ended up wearing No. 24.

The two are reminiscing for a short film called Italian Imports that airs Friday at 6 p.m. ET on SportsCenter, part of Spike Lee's ESPN Films series. The Indianapolis Star was given an exclusive preview of the film before its release. The film explores the bond Bryant and Catchings formed as children in Italy and what followed when they came back to the United States.

"Even now, when I watch you, that mentality," Catchings says to Bryant. "I mean, like, that's killer, because I want it."

"You got it," Bryant says. "You got it. Different journeys, different people, but the beast inside of us is exactly the same."

They pull out that photo from 1986, inside the Colosseum in Rome, and start laughing.

"Check out the gold chain," Catchings says.

"Why would they let me wear a damn gold chain with my shirt half unzipped?" Bryant says. "Look at you."

They smile. Catchings was just a tiny thing, barely 7 years old. She looks unassuming, almost shy or scared. She was, after all, living a whole new life.

THROWN INTO ANOTHER WORLD

Harvey Catchings, Tamika's father, played in the NBA from 1974 to 1985 for the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Clippers.

"And after that season, it was kind of like, 'OK, where are we going next?' " Catchings recalls.

Harvey Catchings told Tamika and her older brother and sister that they weren't just moving to another city. They were moving overseas to Gorizia, Italy, where he would play on the Segafredo team.

Tamika Catchings was in awe. There's a world outside of America?

There sure was, a world in which she would soon meet Bryant.

Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, Kobe's father, played in the NBA for eight years with the Philadelphia 76ers, San Diego Clippers and Houston Rockets.

In 1984, a year after he had played his last game, he moved his family, including 6-year-old Kobe, to Rieti, Italy, to play for the AMG Sebastiani team.

"It was just kind of like another world that we kind of got thrown into," says Catchings.

"First of all, there's not too many black kids running around in Italy at the time, you know what I mean?" Bryant says. "Back then in European leagues you were only allowed two foreigners. They all knew each other. My father knew her father. It was a small community."

The young Bryant and Catchings played basketball together. Their families would plan trips to see different sites.

"We got such a broader perspective on life, it's crazy," Bryant says. "We grew up thinking anything is possible."

Possible, yes, but not always easy.

A TOUGH RETURN

"Do you know that I have a hearing problem, like I wear hearing aids?" Catchings asks Bryant during the film.

"I didn't know that," he says.

Catchings was born with mild hearing loss, but enough of a loss that she had to wear hearing aids. In Italy, no one really noticed. They spoke a different language.

But after playing just one year in Italy, her dad moved the Catchings family back to the United States.

"As a little girl, the only thing I wanted to do was fit in and be, quote unquote, normal like everybody else," Catchings said. "When I moved back from Italy, I got made fun of for my hearing aid, for the way I talked, for being different."

She says that year in Italy was the last time she "felt free" as a kid.

"My story of coming back, that was the toughest year for me," she says.

Bryant's return to America wasn't any easier. His family stayed in Italy seven years, and by the time he came back, he was behind in school.

"I didn't speak the English language very well, couldn't read very well," he says. "There were times where the teacher would call on me in class and I couldn't read. I didn't know a word."

THE EQUALIZER

Basketball was an escape for Bryant, a way to prove himself to his peers, put himself on equal ground.

"It wound up being the place where I vented those frustrations," he says. "When I got to the states, it was like, 'You can make fun of me here (in the classroom), but you're in deep (expletive) out here (on the court) buddy."

Catchings used the sport she had grown to love in Italy to overcome her hearing disability and the people who taunted her.

"I was like, 'You make fun of me, but we go out here and I'm gonna get you,' " she says. "And if I don't have you now, I'm going to practice, practice and practice until I get there."

Bryant says he and Catchings learned the grit of the game of basketball in Italy, the "grimy."

"Tamika and I are old school in that sense," Bryant said. "So when I watch her play, I respect that. You know, growing up overseas it was hard at times, but it was also a blessing. And I think it gives you inner toughness that's probably stayed with us."

ANOTHER GENERATION TO COME

And then the two pull out more photos of that childhood year they were together in Italy. Laughing again at what they used to be.

"It's been kind of cool looking at the journey, how everything kind of intertwined," Catchings says.

And that journey could keep going.

"You have two daughters, so one of those or both might make it to the WNBA one day," Catchings says of Bryant's girls. "And then hopefully I'll get married and I'll have kids. I don't know where my kids will end up."

Bryant assures her of one place they will all end up one day. In a familiar place to both of them.

"We'll take them to Italy," he says. "Because we've come from Italy and have just been kicking ass ever since."

Dana Hunsinger Benbow writes for The Indianapolis Star, a Gannett affiliate.

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