Kobe Bryant’s NBA origin story can be retold in With the “8th Pick,” a movie exploring the draft-day choices that modified basketball.

Kobe Bryant and the 1996 NBA Draft take heart courtroom in a brand new Warner Bros. mission that dives deep into the pivotal hours that reshaped basketball historical past.

The studio has secured rights to With the eighth Pick, a spec script written by Alex Sohn and Gavin Johannsen, which zeroes in on the behind-the-scenes choices that led to Bryant touchdown with the Los Angeles Lakers as an alternative of the New Jersey Nets.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie is being produced by Tim and Trevor White of Star Thrower Entertainment, alongside Ryan Stowell and Gotham Chopra from Religion of Sports, an organization co-founded by Tom Brady and Michael Strahan.

Described as a tense draft-day thriller within the spirit of Moneyball and Air, the movie unpacks the 2 weeks main up to the 1996 NBA Draft.

It focuses on the inner debates inside the Nets’ entrance workplace, the place normal supervisor John Nash and head coach John Calipari reportedly clashed over whether or not to take the highschool phenom with the eighth Pick.

Financial issues and uncertainty about Bryant’s readiness led the group to move.

Bryant, who had declared for the draft straight out of Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania, was finally chosen thirteenth general by the Charlotte Hornets.

He was then traded to the Lakers in a pre-arranged deal involving veteran heart Vlade Divac. That resolution would launch a 20-year profession in Los Angeles, the place Bryant grew to become a five-time NBA champion and international icon.

The movie avoids masking Bryant’s tragic 2020 loss of life in a helicopter crash, as an alternative specializing in the formative second that set his profession in movement. Producers are nonetheless within the early phases of growth and haven’t but introduced a director or solid.

Bryant’s highschool profession was already legendary earlier than he entered the league. He averaged 30.8 factors, 12 rebounds and 6.5 assists per sport his senior yr and broke Wilt Chamberlain’s Southeastern Pennsylvania scoring document with 2,883 factors.

Though closely recruited by high faculties, he selected to go professional at 17, turning into simply the sixth participant to leap from highschool to the NBA.

With the eighth Pick provides to the rising record of Bryant-focused tasks, however this one narrows in on a selected turning level that helped outline the fashionable NBA.

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