Kevin Baxter of the Los Angeles Times reports:
Now that Lakers star Kobe Bryant has a little free time, he has decided to spend it in South Africa, with the sport he grew up loving.
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On his first trip to Africa, Bryant took in the U.S. loss to Ghana on Saturday — former President Bill Clinton and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger were there too — then spent Sunday visiting young soccer players at a training center in Soweto, where he answered questions.
His favorite player? Didier Drogba, the powerful forward of now-eliminated Ivory Coast.
The team he admires? Brazil, which he hopes to watch against Chile on Monday.
InsideHoops.com says: It would be cool to see Kobe meet the Brazil team, just to see the reactions on the Brazil players’ faces. I assume that every single one of them knows who Bryant is, but I wonder if they would mostly treat him like a celebrity, or just a star of a sport that most of them aren’t that into. Obviously they’d all be polite to each other, but I wonder how many of these soccer legends really know and like basketball.
