I WAS BORN in Lima, Ohio, a small city in the United States, to high-school sweethearts, in 1987. My childhood was split between the inner city and my great-grandparents’ farm: livestock, a wood-burning furnace, the whole thing. Although both my parents had been athletes, I never saw them in their prime. Instead, I watched my older sister. My parents split up when I was six or seven, and we moved to Columbus. My mum worked four jobs to support us. Money was tight, but there were constants: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films, and a meal at a Chinese restaurant as a reward when I did well at school.AT MY GRANDFATHER’S house, I’d sit for hours watching old VHS basketball tapes. There was Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. One clip stayed with me – a young Kobe Bryant growing up in Italy, speaking Italian, playing basketball on the other side of the world (his father played for an Italian team). Something shifted in me. I started to dream of playing overseas. I was also quietly obsessed with Asia. I watched anime, drew constantly – it felt like a world I couldn’t explain to anyone in Ohio. Every year, our teacher asked us what our top three ambitions were. Mine never changed: professional basketball player, marine biologist, or lawyer. In that order. I was already manifesting it.Bryant (left) with dad Kevin, sister Brittany and grandmother Debra Austin, in Lima, Ohio, 1993-1994. Photo: courtesy Bryant AustinMY SISTER IS two years older than me, and she was my hero before I knew what that meant. At school, she protected me from bullies, from older boys who wanted to jump me. When I was 13, a group of men broke into our home and held our family hostage at gunpoint for hours. While two of them left to move what they had stolen, one stayed behind. My sister – 15, maybe 16 then – wrestled the gun away from him. She shot him in the face. She saved all of us.I WASN’T AN immediate star. I have always been super-introverted, and had anxiety interacting with crowds and fans. I didn’t make varsity until my senior year. No one was knocking down my door offering scholarships. So, I started clicking through university websites, cold-emailing coaches. That’s how mundane it was. I ended up playing at Notre Dame College, then Columbus State and Indiana Tech. After graduating, I played in the professional minor leagues, but it wasn’t enough.An 11-year-old Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, in 1998. Photo: courtesy Bryant AustinMY TURNING POINT was a high-profile tournament in Portsmouth, Virginia, where I was up against players from Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina – the big blue-blood universities. I didn’t just hold my own; I dominated. There was a rage in me, the accumulated weight of being overlooked for years. My trainer and mentor, Greg “Radar” Williamson, spent two years helping me prepare for that moment.