“You sit there thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ ” Young said. “But you also want to be respectful they upended their lives to show up at your doorstep.” Downer conducted a few practices with the Chinese basketball team, and the team’s translator eventually met Bryant during one of his trips to China. The French students were too old to enroll at Lower Merion, but Downer trained them for a session. Lower Merion declined to sell any Bryant gear to the Ireland student, but it gave him a used jersey and invited him to its summer camp. “We were never in the business of profiting off of Kobe Bryant,” Young said. “He was our brother, our teammate and friend. That didn’t change.”