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What made Kobe Bryant special?

Kobe Bryant was special because of his remarkable work ethic and dedication to the game of basketball. He was constantly pushing himself to his limits and engaging in extreme personal practice . He studied the game extensively, learning from the greats like Jerry West and Michael Jordan . Kobe had an unwavering belief in his abilities and a relentless pursuit of excellence . He was known for his intense preparation, attention to detail, and commitment to continuous improvement . His competitiveness and focus on winning drove him to outwork his opponents . Kobe's commitment and drive set him apart and made him a true legend of the game .

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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): And he walked out of the locker room. And so the rest of the book is on Kobe's drive to get back to the championship. That's all he's like, I have one goal, one determinant in whether my career was a success or not. And it's like, how many rings did I get? And so there's many pages where I don't have any highlights, and then I get to a page like this where there's two or three pages in a row where I highlight almost the entire thing. And so I'm gonna read my note first, and I'll leave this in the show notes as well. This is important. There's another four ideas spread out on those pages. Search for your limits, extreme personal practice, resourcefulness, find a way, that's number three, and number four, study the greats. And so it says, if the scoring displays, meaning he's just scoring a ton of points, 40, 50, 60 points a game, if the scoring displays showed anything, they revealed that Bryant was clearly a man in search of his limits. His ability to perform at this high level was solidly based on his years of extreme personal practice. He began with his immaculate footwork, an array of pivots, reverse pivots, jab steps, and feints that allowed him to create the room to rise up in a tight space and make seemingly impossible shots under impossible circumstances. This is really the way I think about this is really resourcefulness, right? Taking something that other people could do, yet finding an opportunity in something that's available to everybody else where like you see opportunity where other people see nothing, right?
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): They run out of money. And then we get to Kobe's version of an event that I talked about that was written in that 600-page biography of his life where he shoots these air balls very early in his career. And so he says, this was a critical period for my development. At the end of my first season in the NBA, we had made it to the semifinals up against Utah. But in the deciding fifth game, I let fly four air balls, and we lost our chance at the title. Those shots let me know what I needed to work on the most, my strength. In that game, my nerves were not the problem. I just wasn't strong enough to get the ball there. My legs were spaghetti. They couldn't handle that long of a season. How did I respond to that? By getting on an intense weight training program. By the start of the next season, my legs and arms were stronger and I was ready to get it on. In the immediate aftermath, I was never concerned by how the franchise or fans would react. I knew I would put in the work, which is what I did. In fact, as soon as we landed, I went to the Pacific Palisades High School gym and shot all night long. I went back the next day and worked. And I worked and worked and worked and worked. In my mind, it was never a matter of, oh, I'll never get another shot at this. I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt. I knew.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
Founders
(someone): They run out of money. And then we get to Kobe's version of an event that I talked about that was written in that 600-page biography of his life where he shoots these air balls very early in his career. And so he says, this was a critical period for my development. At the end of my first season in the NBA, we had made it to the semifinals up against Utah. But in the deciding fifth game, I let fly four air balls, and we lost our chance at the title. Those shots let me know what I needed to work on the most, my strength. In that game, my nerves were not the problem. I just wasn't strong enough to get the ball there. My legs were spaghetti. They couldn't handle that long of a season. How did I respond to that? By getting on an intense weight training program. By the start of the next season, my legs and arms were stronger and I was ready to get it on. In the immediate aftermath, I was never concerned by how the franchise or fans would react. I knew I would put in the work, which is what I did. In fact, as soon as we landed, I went to the Pacific Palisades High School gym and shot all night long. I went back the next day and worked. And I worked and worked and worked and worked. In my mind, it was never a matter of, oh, I'll never get another shot at this. I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt. I knew.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): I realized at this point that I needed to be proactive about strengthening my ankles. After researching the matter, it became apparent that tap dancing was going to be the best way to build up my ankle strength while simultaneously improving my foot speed and rhythm. So I hired an instructor and started going to the studio. I worked on that all summer and I benefited from it for the rest of my career. So then this is a section of the book where every page is dedicated to one person, one historically great person that he studied, he wanted to be developing a relationship with, and that he would learn from. This is the main theme of the book. And also, if you think about why he wrote the book, because he wanted to, unfortunately, you know, didn't know he's going to pass away so young. He was going to play this role for generations of players going forward. And it's depressing that he doesn't get the opportunity to do so. So the first person he talks about is his mentor, Jerry West, who was the one that drafted him and brought him to the Lakers. He was there for a lot of my early big moments in my career. I specifically remember riding with Jerry and Alexis to my first workout. At the time, at the time, I was thinking, I'm sitting next to Jerry West. To the Jerry West. I asked him a ton of questions about moments. You see that theme? Asking questions. This relentless search for useful information for his career. It's a main lesson to learn from Kobe Bryant, right? I asked him a ton of questions about moments and games in his career.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): This is also the guy that Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close mentor throughout, like, his entire life. And so West says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to your attention. But it says, before the workout, Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West. And this is what Bryant said after that. he just knows so much about the game. And according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be like this I wanted to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not lollygagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay But Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in his skill set alone. Just the amount of work that a player would have had to do to possess such immaculate moves, the footworks and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection. So now he's playing on the Lakers. He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan. and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says Magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize and there were no exceptions.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right? So he says, by year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer. They'll never catch up. And this is just a quote from his AAU coach at this time. Kobe's a genius in basketball. He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game. The note I left myself on this page. How many high school seniors are this focused? Part one being talking about the girl he's dating in high school, being Kobe Bryant's girlfriend at that age meant lots of evenings at Bryant's house watching basketball videos. A few pages later, how many high school seniors are this focus part two? One day, just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't use the gym because there was flooding. 14 guys, practice had to be called off. 14 guys just sprinted out of there, high-fiving each other, excited about no practice. This is bullshit. Bryant screamed, slamming a ball on the floor. This is bullshit. We've got to practice. I want to practice. This is ridiculous. OK, so now we get to the point where Kobe is going to the NBA. He's already made a decision.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): So it says he worked harder than any other kid that I've ever seen. This is the guy that's running the actual summer camp. And he wanted it more than anybody else. And it says, if you're breaking down tape, of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, which Kobe's doing as a 14, 15, 16, and 17-year-old kid, right? If you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats, you come to consider them your teachers. So one of the things that makes Kobe's story unique is the fact he jumped right from high school to the NBA. In fact, when he was drafted, his parents had to sign the contract because he was 17. And so this book spends quite a bit of time talking about the fact that, hey, you have all these shoe companies like Nike and Adidas. They're playing a huge role in the basketball industry because they're making just so much money. And so Kobe's going to sign with Adidas and they're going to put a lot of resources behind him, making him obviously extremely well-known and making sure that people buy the shoes. I'm skipping over that part because really what I found so interesting, and what's personally interesting to me, is if you read Phil Knight's autobiography, Shoe Dog, which I covered for the second time on episode 186, it's a fantastic, it's one of the best autobiographies of an entrepreneur you can ever get. But you have an indication that he's really competitive in his own words, but what I always find interesting is how people say, no, no, he's even more competitive. Phil Knight is even more competitive than you could possibly imagine.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): Or you see this with some interviews people give, where they may be being counseled by PR people. And that kind of relates to this next section, because I had seen a bunch of interviews with Coach K, the legendary coach at Duke. He's a supreme winner. But when I heard him talk in this documentary on the Redeem team, I was shocked, but I shouldn't have been. Because when you have super competitive people like him, there's no way you could win as much as he did if he wasn't super competitive. It's not surprising that you would hear the way they use language and try to motivate and just how serious. Again, they're taking what's fundamentally a game, basketball, and treating it like a professional. So they take it extremely serious. And at their point, it's like, hey, we're fighting against other nations. And so that'll make sense in a minute. I'm going to read you this note I took while I was watching the documentary. It's gonna be a quote from Coach K, but first, here's Kobe and why he admired Coach K. He says, I gained a lot of respect for him as he recruited me when I was in high school. I would have attended Duke if I had gone to college. Getting to play for him over a decade later with Team USA was fulfilling. A few things about him stood out. For one, he was really intense, which I could appreciate. I was like, ooh, okay, that's exactly what I thought of when I saw him in the documentary.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): I just want to be the man, he told me, reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I just have to find a way. And he would, despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time. As he closed in on the end of his career, Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in 20 seasons. and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players. Though that night, he said he didn't know how he would get to the top, he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there. Implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game, night after night, game after game, until he found a dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else. He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him. In turn, his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict, just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport. Night after night, day after day for two decades, through injury and turmoil, through the rupture of one key relationship after another, there would be no price he would not pay to have his greatness. What follows in this book is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): Back to the book, he always used to tell us, if you want to be a better player, you have to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. His dissection of the game was at another level. In my entire career, I've never seen a player as dedicated to being the best. His determination is unparalleled. He unquestionably worked harder than anyone else I have ever played with. And this is one of the reasons why. Kobe knew that to be the best, you need a different approach from everyone else. I remember a time when we got together as a team to have our annual dinner right before the playoffs. I was sitting next to him and as we were getting ready to leave, he told me he was going to the gym to get a workout in. As much as I was very aware of the amount of extra time he put in outside of our regular work hours, it always shocked me at how disciplined he could be even during a relaxed situation. Paul, not Paul, Phil Jackson writes the introduction to this book and he mentioned that as well, that, you know, the coaching staff would usually get, would show up at the arena, maybe like 8, 8.30 in the morning. And by the time that he gets there, Kobe's already taking a nap because he had already worked out on his own several hours before practice started. back to this night at dinner. When everyone else was thinking it was time for bed, his mind was telling him it was time to get ahead of the competition. Over the years, a lot of people have wondered... Oh, this is what I was just mentioning to you a minute ago. Over the years, a lot of people have wondered how difficult it must have been to play with Kobe.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right? So he says, by year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer. They'll never catch up. And this is just a quote from his AAU coach at this time. Kobe's a genius in basketball. He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game. The note I left myself on this page. How many high school seniors are this focused? Part one being talking about the girl he's dating in high school, being Kobe Bryant's girlfriend at that age meant lots of evenings at Bryant's house watching basketball videos. A few pages later, how many high school seniors are this focus part two? One day, just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't use the gym because there was flooding. 14 guys, practice had to be called off. 14 guys just sprinted out of there, high-fiving each other, excited about no practice. This is bullshit. Bryant screamed, slamming a ball on the floor. This is bullshit. We've got to practice. I want to practice. This is ridiculous. OK, so now we get to the point where Kobe is going to the NBA. He's already made a decision.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale. That was an excerpt from the book that we talked about today, which is this giant 600-page biography that I'm holding in my hand. It's called Showboat, The Life of Kobe Bryant, and it was written by Roland Lazenby. So in addition to reading this book, I also watched and then took notes on this new documentary on the Redeem team, which is the 2008 Olympic basketball team that Kobe was on. And I think I'll quote some notes from the podcast, but I'm also going to put all the notes that I took while watching the documentary in the show notes. So I want to start an introduction with a few themes that you and I have discussed a few times. And the first thing is that belief comes before ability. And I think most people mistakenly reverse the order. And we see this demonstrated because way before he even gets to the NBA, Kobe believed that he was going to be one of the greatest basketball players to ever live. From his teen years, Kobe Bryant had been shockingly bold in his prediction that he's going to make himself the greatest basketball player ever. At every turn, this is going to be a second theme that you and I have discussed over and over again, when you have a giant goal for your life, other people around you are not going to be able to understand that. That is an extremely rare trait. And so as a result, they're going to be extremely dismissive. And many times they'll call you crazy. The word Kobe is crazy. The phrase Kobe is crazy is repeated over and over and over again in this book. So it says, at every turn, his declarations of future greatness
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): Over the years, a lot of people have wondered... Oh, this is what I was just mentioning to you a minute ago. Over the years, a lot of people have wondered how difficult it must have been to play with Kobe. It really wasn't. All you had to do was understand where he was coming from, what he was about, and how badly he wanted to win. he would challenge players and coaches to match his intensity, his desire to bring the very best every single day, not just at games, but at practices too. And so that idea that he challenged players and coaches to match his intensity, that is mentioned when Kobe is like a kid in Italy playing. He's maybe eight years old, 11 years old. It's mentioned by his high school coach, and it's again mentioned in the NBA as well. In fact, I just watched the the Redeem Team documentary on Netflix about the USA, 2008 USA Men's Basketball Olympic Team. And they said the exact same thing. In fact, Coach K said that exact same thing. So it says, Kobe wanted to find out what you were made of and if he could count on you to help him win, plain and simple. And then he closes this section out saying, enjoy this magnificent book, which reflects some of what I've shared here with you. The qualities of an extraordinary person. I have no doubt that you will be inspired. And then just a few things from Phil Jackson's introduction. The note I left myself on this page is easy to play, difficult to master, internal drive and learn from history, internal drive and learn from history.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): I just want to be the man, he told me, reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I just have to find a way. And he would, despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time. As he closed in on the end of his career, Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in 20 seasons. and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players. Though that night, he said he didn't know how he would get to the top, he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there. Implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game, night after night, game after game, until he found a dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else. He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him. In turn, his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict, just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport. Night after night, day after day for two decades, through injury and turmoil, through the rupture of one key relationship after another, there would be no price he would not pay to have his greatness. What follows in this book is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): This is really the way I think about this is really resourcefulness, right? Taking something that other people could do, yet finding an opportunity in something that's available to everybody else where like you see opportunity where other people see nothing, right? This unique skill was the perfectly formed product of his study of untold hours of videotape of every single one of the game's great scorers. It also involved conversations and more film study with Tex Winter about footwork and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details. And this is the end result of putting all this together. Bryant was building respect among his peers. Every time we played them and the game was tight, we guarded him well, said San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich. But he'd still knock down the shot. Popovich had a full understanding of what allowed a singular player like Bryant to stand far above so many others. He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else. So now we go back to this guy, Schaefer, who I was referencing that had worked with both Bryant and Jordan. Chip Schaefer became Bryant's go-to aid as far as workouts, which meant that Schaefer was on call around the clock. Schaefer had an endless supply of Jordan stories to share when Bryant wanted to take a break in between his workouts. Schaefer recalled, Kobe would ask me specific questions about how Jordan would handle situations. Kobe was often curious about how, not just basketball specific stuff, but even some of the peripheral things, like if a team was going through something, How would Michael react toward a teammate? He was interested in what kind of leader and what kind of leadership and management Michael would have.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): And Larry Bird is talking. He's like, you know, he's talking essentially about the doubters, right? Like you went to a tiny school. And so that's the background to what I'm about to quote him here. He says, they said you never played against the UCLA or Notre Dame or an IU. They said he, meaning Larry, he's talking about himself. They said he won't be able to get his jump start off in the pros. He won't be quick enough. He won't be able to rebound. It took me three days after rookie camp. I found out, hey, this league is nothing, I can play in this league, and I will dominate in this league. And that is so important, because it's like, wait, everybody, the critics were telling me, this is a critics don't know shit that you and I have talked about over and over again, right? Critics are saying I can't do this. I get to the NBA, I'm playing against other NBA players, like, no, I can do this, and I'm actually way better than them too. I absolutely love, love that video. And then we go back into Kobe's work ethic again. It's not just saying, hey, I'm good enough. No, it's like you have to back that up and you should be putting in the work to do so. It says, man, let me tell you something. That's when I first saw it. This is one of his high school teammates or the other high school players in this camp that he's in.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): I used to watch their moves and then I'd add them to my game. It was the beginning of a career-long focus on studying game recordings. He would invest long hours each day in breaking down his own performances and those of opponents, far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking. So there's this guy named Tim Grover, who trained both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and I heard him in an interview talk about this. And Tim said, everybody watched film of the current players. Kobe would get film of players going way back. He would watch Jerry West, Oscar Robinson. He'd say, I want to see what those guys did to be successful. So during the off season, they'd come home from Italy to Philadelphia, where they're from, and Kobe would play in the summer league. And one of the counselors of the summer league tries to give Kobe terrible advice, which is advice a lot of people say, and they say, be realistic. So it says, one of the counselors was looking over the applications and noticed that under career plans, Kobe had listed NBA. So the counselor made it a point to admonish Kobe. Only one in a million make it to the NBA, the counselor said. So you have to plan on a future other than basketball. I'm going to be that one in a million," Kobe replied. He was 11. And that kind of self-belief and desire to be quote-unquote unrealistic is very common in these stories that you and I study. When I got to this part, the first thing that came to mind was actually one of my favorite quotes from Jay-Z's autobiography, which I covered back on episode 238.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): This is also the guy that Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close mentor throughout, like, his entire life. And so West says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to your attention. But it says, before the workout, Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West. And this is what Bryant said after that. he just knows so much about the game. And according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be like this I wanted to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not lollygagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay But Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in his skill set alone. Just the amount of work that a player would have had to do to possess such immaculate moves, the footworks and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection. So now he's playing on the Lakers. He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan. and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says Magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize and there were no exceptions.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): And then Kobe talks about another player that has traits that you and I can emulate. Again, no names, the idea is important, not the names. He is a constant learner. This past year, when he was 29 years old, he came to Orange County, that's where Kobe lived, and we would work out for a few hours at 5 a.m. At that age, most guys in the league think they know it all. He wanted to work on his post game, on his footwork in the post. He realized that this was the next step in his evolution and the key to his longevity. This is, I double underlined this section here. That's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. So we spent quite a bit of time working on that and I saw him use some of those lessons we worked on in game action as soon as the season started. Again, that's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. And then I'll close on this idea that we learned from Michael Jordan's autobiography. You should have an uncompromised dedication to excellence. Winning championships is everything. It's really one of the greatest joys on the planet. That feeling drove me to always want more. When I got one ring, I wanted two. When I got two, I wanted three. I think that drives them from being part of a rebuilding process. After struggling for a few years and working and working to reach that pinnacle, once I reached it, I wanted to achieve more.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): And he walked out of the locker room. And so the rest of the book is on Kobe's drive to get back to the championship. That's all he's like, I have one goal, one determinant in whether my career was a success or not. And it's like, how many rings did I get? And so there's many pages where I don't have any highlights, and then I get to a page like this where there's two or three pages in a row where I highlight almost the entire thing. And so I'm gonna read my note first, and I'll leave this in the show notes as well. This is important. There's another four ideas spread out on those pages. Search for your limits, extreme personal practice, resourcefulness, find a way, that's number three, and number four, study the greats. And so it says, if the scoring displays, meaning he's just scoring a ton of points, 40, 50, 60 points a game, if the scoring displays showed anything, they revealed that Bryant was clearly a man in search of his limits. His ability to perform at this high level was solidly based on his years of extreme personal practice. He began with his immaculate footwork, an array of pivots, reverse pivots, jab steps, and feints that allowed him to create the room to rise up in a tight space and make seemingly impossible shots under impossible circumstances. This is really the way I think about this is really resourcefulness, right? Taking something that other people could do, yet finding an opportunity in something that's available to everybody else where like you see opportunity where other people see nothing, right?
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): Or you see this with some interviews people give, where they may be being counseled by PR people. And that kind of relates to this next section, because I had seen a bunch of interviews with Coach K, the legendary coach at Duke. He's a supreme winner. But when I heard him talk in this documentary on the Redeem team, I was shocked, but I shouldn't have been. Because when you have super competitive people like him, there's no way you could win as much as he did if he wasn't super competitive. It's not surprising that you would hear the way they use language and try to motivate and just how serious. Again, they're taking what's fundamentally a game, basketball, and treating it like a professional. So they take it extremely serious. And at their point, it's like, hey, we're fighting against other nations. And so that'll make sense in a minute. I'm going to read you this note I took while I was watching the documentary. It's gonna be a quote from Coach K, but first, here's Kobe and why he admired Coach K. He says, I gained a lot of respect for him as he recruited me when I was in high school. I would have attended Duke if I had gone to college. Getting to play for him over a decade later with Team USA was fulfilling. A few things about him stood out. For one, he was really intense, which I could appreciate. I was like, ooh, okay, that's exactly what I thought of when I saw him in the documentary.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): It is a main theme and a really important part of the book. This is later on in Kobe's career. This is his teammate Derrick Fisher talking about the importance of self-confidence. The more you experience time around him and get to see him in different situations, the more you understand that that's all it is. It's confidence. He's just a guy who has an immeasurable amount of confidence in his ability to play the game. That really was, he's talking about the level of intensity he brings to practices, that really was the way we all should have been competing. We should have been competing with Kobe's spirit. And Kobe was always standoffish. They talk about that in the Redeem Team documentary too. He's a little older in his career, so he was somewhat open, but he is a lone wolf very much. And in many cases, he had a hard time. Essentially, if you wanted to develop a professional relationship with Kobe, he would view it through the lens of basically one thing. And the reason that he was as close as he could be to another player, that would be with Derek Fisher, is because he saw Fisher's work ethic. He's like, Fisher may not be a superstar like I am, but he works his damn ass off, and so therefore I respect him. Work ethic was the one standard by which Bryant measured another player. One of Steve Jobs' favorite quotes was that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. This is an example of that. The great basketball players, and really great at anything, right? The great basketball players try to take complicated things and find simple ways to do them.
Provide examples of how he pushed himself

Kobe Bryant pushed himself in various ways to become the extraordinary player he was. Here are some examples:

  1. Kobe had an incredible work ethic and dedication to improving his skills. He would often outwork his peers by working out twice a day, starting early in the morning and practicing late into the night .
  2. He was a constant learner and sought advice and guidance from basketball legends like Michael Jordan, Jerry West, and Magic Johnson. He asked specific questions about their experiences and studied their game to improve his own .
  3. Kobe was known for his intense preparation and attention to detail. He would spend countless hours studying game footage and analyzing the moves and strategies of other great players .
  4. He constantly pushed himself physically to improve his strength, agility, and footwork. For example, he took tap dancing lessons to strengthen his ankles and improve his foot speed and rhythm .
  5. Kobe had an unwavering belief in his abilities and set high goals for himself. He wanted to be the best and was willing to put in the work and grind to achieve his goals .
  6. He had a competitive mindset and a drive to win. Kobe would not settle for anything less than his best and would push himself and his teammates to stay focused and perform at their highest level .

These are just a few examples of how Kobe Bryant pushed himself to become a special and legendary player.

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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): This is really the way I think about this is really resourcefulness, right? Taking something that other people could do, yet finding an opportunity in something that's available to everybody else where like you see opportunity where other people see nothing, right? This unique skill was the perfectly formed product of his study of untold hours of videotape of every single one of the game's great scorers. It also involved conversations and more film study with Tex Winter about footwork and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details. And this is the end result of putting all this together. Bryant was building respect among his peers. Every time we played them and the game was tight, we guarded him well, said San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich. But he'd still knock down the shot. Popovich had a full understanding of what allowed a singular player like Bryant to stand far above so many others. He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else. So now we go back to this guy, Schaefer, who I was referencing that had worked with both Bryant and Jordan. Chip Schaefer became Bryant's go-to aid as far as workouts, which meant that Schaefer was on call around the clock. Schaefer had an endless supply of Jordan stories to share when Bryant wanted to take a break in between his workouts. Schaefer recalled, Kobe would ask me specific questions about how Jordan would handle situations. Kobe was often curious about how, not just basketball specific stuff, but even some of the peripheral things, like if a team was going through something, How would Michael react toward a teammate? He was interested in what kind of leader and what kind of leadership and management Michael would have.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): I just want to be the man, he told me, reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I just have to find a way. And he would, despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time. As he closed in on the end of his career, Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in 20 seasons. and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players. Though that night, he said he didn't know how he would get to the top, he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there. Implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game, night after night, game after game, until he found a dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else. He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him. In turn, his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict, just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport. Night after night, day after day for two decades, through injury and turmoil, through the rupture of one key relationship after another, there would be no price he would not pay to have his greatness. What follows in this book is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale.
3
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): I realized at this point that I needed to be proactive about strengthening my ankles. After researching the matter, it became apparent that tap dancing was going to be the best way to build up my ankle strength while simultaneously improving my foot speed and rhythm. So I hired an instructor and started going to the studio. I worked on that all summer and I benefited from it for the rest of my career. So then this is a section of the book where every page is dedicated to one person, one historically great person that he studied, he wanted to be developing a relationship with, and that he would learn from. This is the main theme of the book. And also, if you think about why he wrote the book, because he wanted to, unfortunately, you know, didn't know he's going to pass away so young. He was going to play this role for generations of players going forward. And it's depressing that he doesn't get the opportunity to do so. So the first person he talks about is his mentor, Jerry West, who was the one that drafted him and brought him to the Lakers. He was there for a lot of my early big moments in my career. I specifically remember riding with Jerry and Alexis to my first workout. At the time, at the time, I was thinking, I'm sitting next to Jerry West. To the Jerry West. I asked him a ton of questions about moments. You see that theme? Asking questions. This relentless search for useful information for his career. It's a main lesson to learn from Kobe Bryant, right? I asked him a ton of questions about moments and games in his career.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): This is also the guy that Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close mentor throughout, like, his entire life. And so West says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to your attention. But it says, before the workout, Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West. And this is what Bryant said after that. he just knows so much about the game. And according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be like this I wanted to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not lollygagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay But Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in his skill set alone. Just the amount of work that a player would have had to do to possess such immaculate moves, the footworks and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection. So now he's playing on the Lakers. He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan. and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says Magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize and there were no exceptions.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): This is also the guy that Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close mentor throughout, like, his entire life. And so West says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to your attention. But it says, before the workout, Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West. And this is what Bryant said after that. he just knows so much about the game. And according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be like this I wanted to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not lollygagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay But Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in his skill set alone. Just the amount of work that a player would have had to do to possess such immaculate moves, the footworks and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection. So now he's playing on the Lakers. He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan. and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says Magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize and there were no exceptions.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): That's when I first saw it. This is one of his high school teammates or the other high school players in this camp that he's in. Kobe's a senior in high school. We worked out twice a day. We would start at 10 in the morning. Kobe was there at 8. We'd get done at 12. Kobe would stay till 2. We'd start again at 7 at night. Kobe would be there at 5. We'd finish at 9. He'd stay till 11. Every day. None of the pros were doing that. And so when I got to that part, I thought about another video that I saved. This is Kobe actually talking about how to get an edge, which can be applied to any domain, right? He says, your job is to be the best you can be. You want to train as much as you can, as often as you can. Imagine you wake up at 3, you train 4 to 6. Relax. Now you're back at it again, 9 to 11. Relax. Now you're back at it again, 2 to 4. Relax. Now you're back at it, 7 to 9. Look at how much more training I have done just by starting at four. As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right?
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): This is really the way I think about this is really resourcefulness, right? Taking something that other people could do, yet finding an opportunity in something that's available to everybody else where like you see opportunity where other people see nothing, right? This unique skill was the perfectly formed product of his study of untold hours of videotape of every single one of the game's great scorers. It also involved conversations and more film study with Tex Winter about footwork and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details. And this is the end result of putting all this together. Bryant was building respect among his peers. Every time we played them and the game was tight, we guarded him well, said San Antonio Spurs coach Greg Popovich. But he'd still knock down the shot. Popovich had a full understanding of what allowed a singular player like Bryant to stand far above so many others. He was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else. So now we go back to this guy, Schaefer, who I was referencing that had worked with both Bryant and Jordan. Chip Schaefer became Bryant's go-to aid as far as workouts, which meant that Schaefer was on call around the clock. Schaefer had an endless supply of Jordan stories to share when Bryant wanted to take a break in between his workouts. Schaefer recalled, Kobe would ask me specific questions about how Jordan would handle situations. Kobe was often curious about how, not just basketball specific stuff, but even some of the peripheral things, like if a team was going through something, How would Michael react toward a teammate? He was interested in what kind of leader and what kind of leadership and management Michael would have.
8
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): I just want to be the man, he told me, reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I just have to find a way. And he would, despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time. As he closed in on the end of his career, Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in 20 seasons. and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players. Though that night, he said he didn't know how he would get to the top, he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there. Implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game, night after night, game after game, until he found a dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else. He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him. In turn, his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict, just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport. Night after night, day after day for two decades, through injury and turmoil, through the rupture of one key relationship after another, there would be no price he would not pay to have his greatness. What follows in this book is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale.
9
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): I realized at this point that I needed to be proactive about strengthening my ankles. After researching the matter, it became apparent that tap dancing was going to be the best way to build up my ankle strength while simultaneously improving my foot speed and rhythm. So I hired an instructor and started going to the studio. I worked on that all summer and I benefited from it for the rest of my career. So then this is a section of the book where every page is dedicated to one person, one historically great person that he studied, he wanted to be developing a relationship with, and that he would learn from. This is the main theme of the book. And also, if you think about why he wrote the book, because he wanted to, unfortunately, you know, didn't know he's going to pass away so young. He was going to play this role for generations of players going forward. And it's depressing that he doesn't get the opportunity to do so. So the first person he talks about is his mentor, Jerry West, who was the one that drafted him and brought him to the Lakers. He was there for a lot of my early big moments in my career. I specifically remember riding with Jerry and Alexis to my first workout. At the time, at the time, I was thinking, I'm sitting next to Jerry West. To the Jerry West. I asked him a ton of questions about moments. You see that theme? Asking questions. This relentless search for useful information for his career. It's a main lesson to learn from Kobe Bryant, right? I asked him a ton of questions about moments and games in his career.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): They run out of money. And then we get to Kobe's version of an event that I talked about that was written in that 600-page biography of his life where he shoots these air balls very early in his career. And so he says, this was a critical period for my development. At the end of my first season in the NBA, we had made it to the semifinals up against Utah. But in the deciding fifth game, I let fly four air balls, and we lost our chance at the title. Those shots let me know what I needed to work on the most, my strength. In that game, my nerves were not the problem. I just wasn't strong enough to get the ball there. My legs were spaghetti. They couldn't handle that long of a season. How did I respond to that? By getting on an intense weight training program. By the start of the next season, my legs and arms were stronger and I was ready to get it on. In the immediate aftermath, I was never concerned by how the franchise or fans would react. I knew I would put in the work, which is what I did. In fact, as soon as we landed, I went to the Pacific Palisades High School gym and shot all night long. I went back the next day and worked. And I worked and worked and worked and worked. In my mind, it was never a matter of, oh, I'll never get another shot at this. I felt that my destiny was already written. I felt. I knew.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right? So he says, by year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer. They'll never catch up. And this is just a quote from his AAU coach at this time. Kobe's a genius in basketball. He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game. The note I left myself on this page. How many high school seniors are this focused? Part one being talking about the girl he's dating in high school, being Kobe Bryant's girlfriend at that age meant lots of evenings at Bryant's house watching basketball videos. A few pages later, how many high school seniors are this focus part two? One day, just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't use the gym because there was flooding. 14 guys, practice had to be called off. 14 guys just sprinted out of there, high-fiving each other, excited about no practice. This is bullshit. Bryant screamed, slamming a ball on the floor. This is bullshit. We've got to practice. I want to practice. This is ridiculous. OK, so now we get to the point where Kobe is going to the NBA. He's already made a decision.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): is my effort to capture his fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale. That was an excerpt from the book that we talked about today, which is this giant 600-page biography that I'm holding in my hand. It's called Showboat, The Life of Kobe Bryant, and it was written by Roland Lazenby. So in addition to reading this book, I also watched and then took notes on this new documentary on the Redeem team, which is the 2008 Olympic basketball team that Kobe was on. And I think I'll quote some notes from the podcast, but I'm also going to put all the notes that I took while watching the documentary in the show notes. So I want to start an introduction with a few themes that you and I have discussed a few times. And the first thing is that belief comes before ability. And I think most people mistakenly reverse the order. And we see this demonstrated because way before he even gets to the NBA, Kobe believed that he was going to be one of the greatest basketball players to ever live. From his teen years, Kobe Bryant had been shockingly bold in his prediction that he's going to make himself the greatest basketball player ever. At every turn, this is going to be a second theme that you and I have discussed over and over again, when you have a giant goal for your life, other people around you are not going to be able to understand that. That is an extremely rare trait. And so as a result, they're going to be extremely dismissive. And many times they'll call you crazy. The word Kobe is crazy. The phrase Kobe is crazy is repeated over and over and over again in this book. So it says, at every turn, his declarations of future greatness
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): That's when I first saw it. This is one of his high school teammates or the other high school players in this camp that he's in. Kobe's a senior in high school. We worked out twice a day. We would start at 10 in the morning. Kobe was there at 8. We'd get done at 12. Kobe would stay till 2. We'd start again at 7 at night. Kobe would be there at 5. We'd finish at 9. He'd stay till 11. Every day. None of the pros were doing that. And so when I got to that part, I thought about another video that I saved. This is Kobe actually talking about how to get an edge, which can be applied to any domain, right? He says, your job is to be the best you can be. You want to train as much as you can, as often as you can. Imagine you wake up at 3, you train 4 to 6. Relax. Now you're back at it again, 9 to 11. Relax. Now you're back at it again, 2 to 4. Relax. Now you're back at it, 7 to 9. Look at how much more training I have done just by starting at four. As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right?
14
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do, like, their training and try to focus on improving their game, right? So he says, by year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer. They'll never catch up. And this is just a quote from his AAU coach at this time. Kobe's a genius in basketball. He studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game. The note I left myself on this page. How many high school seniors are this focused? Part one being talking about the girl he's dating in high school, being Kobe Bryant's girlfriend at that age meant lots of evenings at Bryant's house watching basketball videos. A few pages later, how many high school seniors are this focus part two? One day, just before practice, the team was informed that it couldn't use the gym because there was flooding. 14 guys, practice had to be called off. 14 guys just sprinted out of there, high-fiving each other, excited about no practice. This is bullshit. Bryant screamed, slamming a ball on the floor. This is bullshit. We've got to practice. I want to practice. This is ridiculous. OK, so now we get to the point where Kobe is going to the NBA. He's already made a decision.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): And then Kobe talks about another player that has traits that you and I can emulate. Again, no names, the idea is important, not the names. He is a constant learner. This past year, when he was 29 years old, he came to Orange County, that's where Kobe lived, and we would work out for a few hours at 5 a.m. At that age, most guys in the league think they know it all. He wanted to work on his post game, on his footwork in the post. He realized that this was the next step in his evolution and the key to his longevity. This is, I double underlined this section here. That's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. So we spent quite a bit of time working on that and I saw him use some of those lessons we worked on in game action as soon as the season started. Again, that's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. And then I'll close on this idea that we learned from Michael Jordan's autobiography. You should have an uncompromised dedication to excellence. Winning championships is everything. It's really one of the greatest joys on the planet. That feeling drove me to always want more. When I got one ring, I wanted two. When I got two, I wanted three. I think that drives them from being part of a rebuilding process. After struggling for a few years and working and working to reach that pinnacle, once I reached it, I wanted to achieve more.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): You can't achieve greatness by walking a straight line. Respect to those who do achieve greatness, and respect to those who are chasing that elusive feeling. That is an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is The Mamba Mentality, How I Play, by Kobe Bryant. Okay, so let's start with the dedication that Kobe wrote right at the very beginning of the book. And this is really a great way to think about all the books that you and I talk about. And Kobe says, this book is dedicated to the next generation of great athletes. May you find the power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own. Just make it better than this one. And so that is a main theme that Kobe repeats probably a dozen times in this book. He dedicates an unbelievable amount of a book that does not take, this book is mostly like a picture book. You can read the whole thing in a day. And he dedicates a lot of time in this book to the importance of learning from and studying the great people that came before you. So I want to go to the forward. It's written by Kobe's teammate Paul Gasol. They won two championships together and he talks about, hey, I was traded to the Lakers in 2008 and my life changed. And it says it was past 1 a.m. when I finally got to my room and shortly after I heard someone knocking on my door. It was Kobe. The message was clear. There was no time to waste. The moment was now.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): It was, if I want to play, this is what I have to do, so I just show up and do it. And he talks about his grueling schedule, and the one way that he dealt with a grueling schedule was that he would listen to his body. If he was tired, he would just take naps. Every day, he'd take sometimes several naps a day, and they could be short naps. They could be 15, 20 minutes. So he says, sometimes as part of that, I'd be so tired that I'd need a quick nap at some point during the day. whether before practice or a game or on the bus or on the trainer's table. If I was tired, I would doze off. I always found that short 15 minute catnaps gave me all the energy I would need for peak performance. And this is just a fantastic line. It's about the fact that your routine is going to change. It can change and it will change, but your obsession cannot. So he says, the only aspect that can't change is that obsession. You have to enter every activity every single time with a want and a need to do it to the best of your ability. This was fantastic. This is the idea that you can find an edge by doing things that your competitors are not doing. Kobe took tap dancing lessons so he could strengthen his ankles. I realized at this point that I needed to be proactive about strengthening my ankles. After researching the matter, it became apparent that tap dancing was going to be the best way to build up my ankle strength while simultaneously improving my foot speed and rhythm.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): This is also the guy that Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close mentor throughout, like, his entire life. And so West says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to your attention. But it says, before the workout, Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West. And this is what Bryant said after that. he just knows so much about the game. And according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be like this I wanted to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not lollygagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay But Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West, it had revealed his heart. It was there in his skill set alone. Just the amount of work that a player would have had to do to possess such immaculate moves, the footworks and fakes and execution, the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection. So now he's playing on the Lakers. He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan. and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says Magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize and there were no exceptions.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
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(someone): It is a main theme and a really important part of the book. This is later on in Kobe's career. This is his teammate Derrick Fisher talking about the importance of self-confidence. The more you experience time around him and get to see him in different situations, the more you understand that that's all it is. It's confidence. He's just a guy who has an immeasurable amount of confidence in his ability to play the game. That really was, he's talking about the level of intensity he brings to practices, that really was the way we all should have been competing. We should have been competing with Kobe's spirit. And Kobe was always standoffish. They talk about that in the Redeem Team documentary too. He's a little older in his career, so he was somewhat open, but he is a lone wolf very much. And in many cases, he had a hard time. Essentially, if you wanted to develop a professional relationship with Kobe, he would view it through the lens of basically one thing. And the reason that he was as close as he could be to another player, that would be with Derek Fisher, is because he saw Fisher's work ethic. He's like, Fisher may not be a superstar like I am, but he works his damn ass off, and so therefore I respect him. Work ethic was the one standard by which Bryant measured another player. One of Steve Jobs' favorite quotes was that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. This is an example of that. The great basketball players, and really great at anything, right? The great basketball players try to take complicated things and find simple ways to do them.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
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(someone): Or you see this with some interviews people give, where they may be being counseled by PR people. And that kind of relates to this next section, because I had seen a bunch of interviews with Coach K, the legendary coach at Duke. He's a supreme winner. But when I heard him talk in this documentary on the Redeem team, I was shocked, but I shouldn't have been. Because when you have super competitive people like him, there's no way you could win as much as he did if he wasn't super competitive. It's not surprising that you would hear the way they use language and try to motivate and just how serious. Again, they're taking what's fundamentally a game, basketball, and treating it like a professional. So they take it extremely serious. And at their point, it's like, hey, we're fighting against other nations. And so that'll make sense in a minute. I'm going to read you this note I took while I was watching the documentary. It's gonna be a quote from Coach K, but first, here's Kobe and why he admired Coach K. He says, I gained a lot of respect for him as he recruited me when I was in high school. I would have attended Duke if I had gone to college. Getting to play for him over a decade later with Team USA was fulfilling. A few things about him stood out. For one, he was really intense, which I could appreciate. I was like, ooh, okay, that's exactly what I thought of when I saw him in the documentary.
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#273 Kobe Bryant: Mamba Mentality: How I Play
Founders
(someone): And then Kobe talks about another player that has traits that you and I can emulate. Again, no names, the idea is important, not the names. He is a constant learner. This past year, when he was 29 years old, he came to Orange County, that's where Kobe lived, and we would work out for a few hours at 5 a.m. At that age, most guys in the league think they know it all. He wanted to work on his post game, on his footwork in the post. He realized that this was the next step in his evolution and the key to his longevity. This is, I double underlined this section here. That's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. So we spent quite a bit of time working on that and I saw him use some of those lessons we worked on in game action as soon as the season started. Again, that's the money right there. That thirst and quest for information and improvement. And then I'll close on this idea that we learned from Michael Jordan's autobiography. You should have an uncompromised dedication to excellence. Winning championships is everything. It's really one of the greatest joys on the planet. That feeling drove me to always want more. When I got one ring, I wanted two. When I got two, I wanted three. I think that drives them from being part of a rebuilding process. After struggling for a few years and working and working to reach that pinnacle, once I reached it, I wanted to achieve more.
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#272 The Life of Kobe Bryant
Founders
(someone): It's like, that's nice that all these other people failed at getting to the NBA. Maybe one in a million, that's fine. I'm that one in a million. So then we skip ahead, now they're living in Philadelphia full-time, Kobe is in high school, and we see this legendary work ethic is already present. That fall in high school, his coach discovered that Brian had a startling work ethic. He pushed himself through a grueling self-improvement schedule that included road work, weights, and seemingly non-stop basketball. In team practices, he was determined to never lose a team drill or contest. For almost four years, he would maintain a perfect record in that regard. And then we see that he matches a fierce work ethic with a relentless learning machine-like mentality. This is his coach saying, you know, the work ethic is one thing, but he also had a sponge-like mentality to be the best that he could, and to do so, he would absorb information. I always thought his brain was a sponge, the coach said. And obviously, if you've ever coached, you know that you just can't say that about all of your players. And then the coach continues to talk about the fact that his level of intensity raised the bar for everybody else. And so this part made me think about one of my all-time favorite Steve Jobs quotes, where he says, And so this is his high school coach describing that. Once they, meaning his other teammates, saw how hard he worked and how passionate he was about the game, it was hard for them not to get on board with what we were trying to do.
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