Transcription
Um, my name is Kobe Bryant, 17 years old. I wasn't invited to parties or, you know, friendly, friendly gatherings on the weekend. So on Fridays and Saturdays, I would go to my rec room, work my basketball, and basically dribble myself to sleep. And I think that that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. Cuz during those lonely hours in the rec room, I discovered the hunger, the motivation, and the desire to be the best possible basketball player I could be.
If I just played a great basketball game, had 40 points or whatever, I'm getting all this positive feedback from people who are at the game, my head swelling up and everything. My parents would be the first people to tell me, "Hey, look, you played a great game, but there's no need for your head to get all big. No need for you to get cocky and think that the world owes you something." But at the same time, when things are bad, things are going bad, they would come up to me and say, "Hey, you know, there's another day. The sun will come out tomorrow. It's time for you to move on and uh, go for bigger and bigger sights. Set, set some bigger goals."
We are playing against the Lakers team, and we're out here in LA. You know, look, I always try to outwork people, right? That's just how I made my mark. So the game was at 7:00. I like, you know what? I'm going to come to the Staples Center, cuz we're playing this when the Lakers had Kobe and Shaq. Okay, this is, this is like the championship Lakers. You know, I'm going to get there at 3:00, and I want to make sure I make 400 made shots before I go back into the room. And then I sit in this on and I get ready for the game.
So, you know, get in the car, get to the gym, get there. And as I'm walking onto the court, who do I see? I see Kobe Bryant already working out. So once I set my foot across that line, I started working out. And so I worked out for a good hour, hour and a half. And when I came off after I was done, I sat down and of course, I still hear the ball bouncing. I look down, I'm like, "This guy's, this guy's still working out." He, he was working out like, it looks like he was in a dead sweat when I got here, and he's still going. And it's not like his moves are nonchalant or lazy. He's doing like game moves, you know?
Um, I sit there and I unlace my shoes. I'm like, "I want to see how long this goes." I sit out there and watch another 25 minutes, and he got done. I said, "Okay, I think I've seen enough. Go play, you know, come back, get in the sauna, get ready for the game." That game, he drops 40 on us, okay? And after the game is over, I'm like, "I, I have to ask this guy. I, I have to understand like why, why he, he works like that." So after the game was, I'm like, "Hey, Co, like, why, why were you in the gym for so long?" He's like, "Cuz I saw you come in, and I, and I wanted you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work, that I'm willing to work harder than you."
We were in Vegas for the start of training camp, and we were getting ready for the Olympics in Beijing. We're going to head to Beijing, and I wanted to establish myself as a young leader on the team by waking up bright and early day one. So the goal was to be the first one at breakfast. So I set my alarm, I make sure I'm up by sunrise. I get out of bed, I put on my gear, and I head downstairs. But when I get there, Kobe's already there with ice packs on his knees, drenched in sweat.
Now, it took me a minute to figure it out, but this guy wasn't only awake before me, he had already worked out. He had just played in the finals days earlier. Meanwhile, I'd been off for months, and I was still exhausted. What he had done that morning was incomprehensible to me. That dedication he had, only days after falling short of an NBA championship. That taught me something I've never forgotten. Legends aren't defined by their successes, they're defined by how they bounce back from their failures.
So when you think about the greatest players of all time, 90, 80% of them have God's gift of natural talent, ability, body, right? So Jordan, 48-inch vertical, right? You got the big hands, right? You have LeBron, right? You have Shaquille O'Neal, right? Then Magic, 6'9" point guard with vision. Kobe, standard, if I give you 6'6", and then took every 6'6" guard in the NBA and NBA history, you would never find him, right? You would never find Kobe. Cuz he didn't have big hands, right? He wasn't quick, he wasn't fast, 38-inch vertical, that's standard. Like, if you don't have a 30-inch vertical, you, you, you're not even a shooting guard in today's game, right? And what he did with that body, it's like you took, you took a, a S500, and he was pushing it like a Bugatti. Mhm. That's what we look at. We look at the normal person fighting gods.
Yes, you're playing against the Golden State Warriors. Score is 107, 109. You guys are close to getting into the playoffs. You're about to take your shot. And then all of a sudden, boom, falls down again. He's struggling. He's at the line to shoot free throws, so he can't be taken out of the game right now, right? After you injured, you went on Facebook and you posted a lengthy blog. This is such BS. All the training and sacrifice just flew out the window with one step that I've done millions of times. The frustration is unbearable. The anger is rage. Why the hell did this happen? Makes no damn sense. Now I'm supposed to come back from this and be the same player or better at 35? How in the world am I supposed to do that? I have no clue. Maybe I should, should break out the rocking chair and reminisce on the career that was. Maybe this is how my book ends. Yeah, maybe father time has defeated me. Then again, maybe not.
There are far greater issues and challenges in the world than a torn Achilles. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Find the silver lining and get to work with the same belief, same drive, and same conviction as ever. One day, the beginning of a new career journey will commence. Today is not that day. If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear. This, this is another obstacle. This obstacle cannot define me. It's not going to, me. It's not going to be responsible for me stepping away from the game that I love. I'm going to step away on my own terms. My brain cannot, it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Um, because if I have to, if I sit there and have to face myself and tell myself, "You're, you're, you're a failure," I think that's, that's a worse, that's almost worse than death.
If your job is to try to be the best basketball player you can be, right? To do that, you have to practice. You have to train, right? You want to train as much as you can, as often as you can. So if you get up at 10:00 in the morning, train at 11:00, right? 12:00, say 12:00, train at 12:00, train for two hours, 12:00 to 2:00. Um, you have to let your body recover. So you eat, recover, whatever. You get back out, you train. Start training again at 6:00, train from 6:00 to 8:00, right? And now you go home, you shower, you eat dinner, you go to bed. You wake up, you do it again, right? Those are two sessions. Now imagine you wake up at 3:00, you train at 4:00, go 4:00 to 6:00. Come home, breakfast, relax, slow, slow. Now you're back at it again, 9:00 to 11:00, right? Relax. And now all of a sudden, you're back at it again, 2:00 to 4:00, and now you're back at it again, you know, 7:00 to 9:00. Look how much more training I have done by simply starting at 4:00, right? So now you do that, and as the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and your peers just grows larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. And by year five or six, it doesn't matter what kind of work they do in the summer, they're never going to catch up because they're five years behind, right? So it makes sense to get up and start your day early because you can get more work in. If I start earlier, I can train more hours, and I know the other guys aren't doing it because I know what their training schedule is, right? So I know if I do this consistently over time, the gap's just going to widen and widen and widen and widen and widen, and they won't be able to get that back. So to me, it was just common sense. And like thinking, how can I get an advantage? Oh, start earlier.
And this is right after that playoff game. We flew back to LA that night, and I got home. It's probably like 3:00 in the morning, and I went down to the high school, which is down the street from our house, and the janitor let me in the gym, and I shot all day. All day. I mean, all day. And, um, I didn't leave the gym. I just kept shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting and shooting and practicing and practicing. And, uh, I got a chance to let out the steam of disappointing my teammates and millions of fans. I got a chance to let all that out instead of bottling it up and envision that moment over and over and over and over and over. That, that was a huge summer for me because I, I, um, I felt like everybody had written me off after those air balls.
You know, basketball for me was the most important thing. So everything I saw, whether it was TV shows, whether it was books I read, people I talked to, everything was done to try to learn how to become a better basketball player. Everything, everything. And so when you have that point of view, then literally the world becomes your library to help you to become better at your craft. You have to do the hard stuff and watch that game and study that game to not make those mistakes over and over again. Just because you weren't brave enough to face it. You got to deal with it. Got to deal with it. Face it. Learn from it. And all those little things. And it sucks. But, but you don't want to have that feeling again, do you? Right? So you got to really study it, face it, and, uh, not to say you'll win the next time you face, but at least you, you'll give yourself a better, a better chance.
A lot of the kids that I was playing against were inner-city kids. And so you're looking at me as if, "Okay, this kid is soft, right? He's from the suburbs of Philadelphia. His father played in the NBA, played professionally. Got it easy. Got it easy. Born on second, you know, all this other stuff, right?" And so they felt like they could try to be physical, try to intimidate me, and do all other stuff, which they couldn't, right? But now I'm saying, "Okay, well, you're trying to attack me. How am I going to attack you? How can I mentally figure out ways to break, break you down? How can I show you that, no, I have the edge, right?" And so that's when it first started for me, is figuring out how to get the upper hand on an opponent that way.
And what would you do to mentally break people down? Then we used to have an All-American Camp I used to go to, and, you know, at the time, when I first showed, I was a sophomore. And, um, one of the things I would do is everybody would be at the cafeteria, you know, eating and doing all sort of stuff. I just go back to the gym. I just go back to the gym. Just, they'd be resting, and, and they'd see me leave, right? But now you're in a tough position because you're like, "Okay, I want to be like, I'm following the kid to go work out, but I know he's working. He's up early, and he's doing all the stuff." So that was my way of showing them, "Yeah, I may be on the suburbs, but you're not going to outwork me." Wow.
And I'm mentally going to... Did someone teach you that? Was that just a thing that you decided, like, "I'm going to get people's minds"? Um, I think it's just, it's just figuring out ways to, to be better. There's a quote from one of my English teachers at La Maran, named, uh, Mr. Fisk. He had a great quote that said, "Rest at the end, not in the middle." And that's something I always live by. I'm not going to rest. I'm going to keep on pushing. Now, there are a lot of answers that I don't have, even questions that I don't have, but I'm just going to keep going. I'm just going to keep going, and I'll figure these things out as we go, right? And you just continue to build that way. So that I try to live by that all the time.
You got a lot of people playing their hard-earned money to come watch you perform. It's your job to be in shape. It's your job to be strong enough to perform at that level every single night. And as a competitor, I'm not, I'm not ducking. Like, it's not, "Oh my God, my back hurts. I'm sore. We got to play Vince Carter and Toronto Raptors tonight." We actually had this happen. We had a game against Toronto in 2000, and Vince was tearing the league up. Um, her back was jacked, jacked. But like the perception of that, like, "What? Kobe's missing the game against Toronto and Vince Carter?" Because, man, my back was really spasming. But people will be like, "What? Oh, he's ducking Vince." Excuse me? No, I don't think so. So I would be in the layup line. Like, "Okay, there's a lot of days where, you know, you can rest and recover. Today ain't one of them. Your back can bother you any other day that ain't bothering me today. We going. He going to have to see me today." Yeah.
My man. Yeah. What does losing feel like to you? Uh, it's exciting. Why is it exciting? Um, because it means you have different, um, ways to get better. There's certain things that you can figure out that you can take advantage of, right? Certain weaknesses that were exposed, um, that you need to shore up, right? So it was exciting. I mean, it sucks to lose, right? But at the same time, there are answers there. You just look at them, um, because you get the information from losing more than from winning, probably. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the answers are there when you win too, you just have to look at them, yeah. Right? So it's a constant process. It's exciting when you win. It's exciting when you lose because the process should be exactly the same whether you win or you lose, is you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better. You find things that you've done well that worked. Figure out how did they work? Why did they work? How, how can you make them work again? Yeah. And, uh, but the hardest thing is to face that stuff.
I wanted to be one of the best basketball players to ever play. And anything else that was outside of that lane, I didn't have time for. At what age did that goal become crystal clear? That I made that deal with myself at 13 years old. At 13 years old. 13 years old. That's the deal I made. Clear about it. Crystal clear. And where did inspiration come from? Um, the love of the game. The love of the game. The challenge. Like, I, I would watch Magic play. I'd watch Michael play, and I would see them do these unbelievable things, and I'd say, "You know, can I get to that level?" I don't know, but let's find out. Let's find out. And so that curiosity to see where I could push this thing led me down that path.
I say, I think the greatest fear that we face is ourselves, actually. You know, I think it's, um, it's not anything that's external or anything that's superficial. I think the greatest fear you face is yourself because, you know, we all have dreams, and it's very scary sometimes to accept the dream that you have. And it's scarier still to say, "Okay, I want that." It's scary because you're afraid that if you put your heart and soul into it and you fail, then how are you going to feel about yourself, right? So being fearless means putting yourself out there and going for it, no matter what. Go for it. Not for anybody else, but for yourself.
At 13 years old, you, I play the longer game because my game wasn't about being better than you at 13. It was to be better than you when the chips are really on, on the line. So when you played at 13, I would size you up and see what your strengths and weaknesses are. How do you approach the game? Are you silly about it? Are you goofy about it? Are you good at it just because you're bigger and stronger than everybody else, right? Or is there actually thought and skill that you put into it, right? And when I'd play, I'd play to my weaknesses. I wouldn't play to my strengths. I'd play to my weaknesses because when you're playing summer basketball, there's so many games, so there's not a lot of skill work being done. So when are you going to get better, right? When you're playing in competition situations, you're only playing to your strengths, why? Because you want to win, right? So what I would do, I was work on the things during those games that I was weak at. Left-hand pull-up jump shot, uh, post game, right? So I have a strategy. And so then fast forward to when I'm 17, and my game is completely well-rounded. And that player at 13 that I saw at 13, still doing the same at 17. Now you got a problem.
The Mamba mentality simply means trying to be the best version of yourself. That's what the mentality means. It means every day, you know, you're trying to become better, and it's a constant quest. It's an infinite quest. So starting at the age of two when I first started playing the game, and on and on and on. I always ask questions. I always try to get better every single day. Like my kids at two could do a lot of things. Mmm. Right? At two, I could dribble a basketball. I could shoot a basketball on a Nerf hoop at the house. And I would go to practice with my father. I would observe my father. I'd sit and watch games with him.
So was he your first coach? Um, yeah, man. I guess you could say that. You know, a lot of things I learned by being, just being around the game, right? So by the age of six, I was already strategizing versus other six-year-olds. I think the best way to prove your, your value is to work, is to learn, is to absorb, um, to be a sponge. You always want to outwork your potential. You know, as hard as you believe you can work, you can work harder than that. And that's what I tried to do when I first came in the league. But, you know, basketball is such a direct competition sport that me coming in at 17, I hated when, like my teammates would say, you know, I get hit with an elbow, right? Shaq would hit me with an elbow in practice, and like, you know, Nick Van Exel will come up and say, "Are you okay?" What am I? "Are you okay?" Hell's wrong with you, you know? So like, I always had that extra chip on my shoulder. So like, every day in practice for me was really trying to annihilate everybody that was that I was playing against because I wanted to prove, "You don't need to babysit me. Like, I'm fine."
Breaking news in this Sunday afternoon. Five-time NBA champion, former League MVP, Kobe Bryant died earlier this afternoon in Los Angeles in a helicopter crash. The world was heartbroken yesterday by a helicopter accident in Los Angeles that claimed the lives of nine people, including that of Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna. Life is short, and it's fragile, and we don't know how many birthdays we have. So just, we don't have to have a birthday to celebrate. Just celebrate life. And if you haven't told someone you love them, do it now. Do it. Tell people you love them. Call your friends, text your friends, hug them, kiss them.
Those times when you get up early and you work hard, those times when you stay up late and you work hard, those times when you don't feel like working, you're too tired, you don't want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. Um, that is actually the dream. That's the dream. It's not the destination, it's the journey. And if you guys, if you guys can understand that, then what you'll see happen is that you won't accomplish your dreams. Your dreams won't come true. Um, something greater will.
And what brings you the most joy right now? Being with my family, really. That is, man, that is the most fun. Hanging out with them all summer, uh, being able to, like, do things that I ordinarily couldn't do, yeah, uh, because of training, because of season and stuff like that. So being around them and watching Bianca grow up, because there are a lot of things that I missed with Natalia and Gianna because I was playing. So being there every day with them is so much fun, man. So brings me the most joy.
No one knows how much time we have. That's why we must live in the moment. We must enjoy the moment. We must reach and see and spend as much time as we can with our families and friends and the people that we absolutely love. I've always said that I wanted to be remembered as a player that didn't waste a moment, didn't waste a day. And, uh, I felt extremely blessed by the God-given talent, but at the same time, I didn't take, take it for granted at all. And so if I could be remembered as a person that was born with a lot of talent, but did everything he could to try to overachieve, you know, that lived every day as if he was the 12th guy on the bench, you know, I think that's a very powerful message to have. And something that hopefully the players that are now and players that will come later, um, choose to embody as well.