Kobe Bryant has a lot of very dedicated fans, and a lot of Kobe-haters. One thing is definitely true; Kobe is one of the best to ever play the game. I would personally place him in the top 10 of all time, you may disagree, but all intelligent basketball fans would have him somewhere close to that. I’m not going to sit here and tell you Kobe only got to the NBA because of his hard work, but I will tell you that he was as great as he was because of his hard work and his dedication. If you look around the internet you can find quote after quote, story after story that tell of Kobe’s competitiveness, his drive, and his work ethic. Kobe was focused on achieving greatness on the basketball court and he knew the main way to do that was to outwork everyone else.
My favorite thing about Kobe is the fact that he never makes excuses. When he has a bad game, he says he had a bad game. If he his knee was bothering him in the game, he doesn’t blame the injury…he says he should have played better. It is great leadership to be accountable for your performance.
With that said, here are some stories and lessons to be learned from Kobe over the years, enjoy.
Kobe Bryant pre-draft workout for the Lakers
Bleacher report ran an excellent piece about Kobe’s pre-draft workout. First, I need to do some baselining here for our younger readers. There are two main victims in this workout, Michael Cooper & Dontae Jones. Michael Cooper was an excellent defender for the Lakers. He was a defensive player of the year in the NBA and Larry Bird said he was the toughest defender he ever faced. At the time of the workouts he was about 40 years old, but was still in great shape. Dontae Jones was another draft pick candidate, he was coming off a run to the NCAA final four, and Dontae was a few years older, bigger, and taller than Kobe.
The story goes that 17 year old Kobe Bryant completely destroyed Michael Cooper in perimeter 1×1. Not just anyone…a guy that had guarded the best players in the NBA for 10 years. They then moved to the post, where Kobe destroyed him again. Next, they tried to bring in someone bigger and stronger in Dontae Jones, and it was the same result. Everyone in the gym that day knew that the Lakers were going to do everything they could do to get him.
The Olympics…exposing peers to his work ethic
In 2008 a bunch of the country’s best players were teammates with Kobe for the US Olympic Men’s Basketball team. This team was dubbed the “Redeem Team”. For the first time, maybe since 1992, the majority of the best US players decided to play on the Olympic team to make up for a disappointing performance on the world stage. Playing together gave some of the other NBA elite the chance to really see how Kobe operated; here is what a few of them said:
“You know what it was for me? And me and him are good friends, but I hadn’t really trained with him — is how hard he works. We saw his dedication to the game. He would get in the gym, lift weights, he would go over to the gym, get shots up before practice, go through the whole practice, and that was his routine every day. He’s not great by accident is my point. He puts the work in. And I think what I learned about Kobe is he’s so hungry to be good, he puts the work in. I just think his hunger and his determination is what I was most impressed with.” – Carlos Boozer
“Kobe was great. He practices as if it’s Game 7. He wants to prove that he’s the best player in the world every single practice.” – Jason Kidd
“You learn a lot of things from Kobe, just his patience and things like that. Just the ultimate competitor. Stays in the gym all the time. Always wants to get better. Always wants to work. When you go out there and play against him, you have to be ready for war. He’s always moving, he’s always physical, you have to always be alert at any time.” – Tayshaun Prince
“We both want to win so badly. It’s one of those things where as great a relationship as we have, as long as we’re playing on the same court against each other, we’re always going to get into it, you know what I mean? That’s the respect factor, because you know that he wants it just as bad as I do.” – Chris Paul
“With Kobe, coaching him in 2008 is what I had hoped to do 12 years earlier, which was to coach the best player on the planet. He cooperated fully and, really, it is one of the best moments of my coaching career.” – Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski)
“Kobe, from day one, is just the hardest-working player I’ve ever been around. He just does an unbelievable job. He came in, he worked out before practice and practiced harder than anybody and then worked out afterwards and continued the whole trip. The first trip we are qualifying and then the Olympics themselves. He’s just an unbelievable competitor and in practice goes 100 percent every day in practice and that brings everybody else up to that same level. He was a huge part of us being ready in the Olympics to be able to win.”
More Olympics…teaching the young guys
Kevin Durant was cut from the team that year, but he had this to say about his experience trying to make the team:
“We had the day off, but they said we could get some shots up if we wanted, so I decided to head over with Jeff Green. Kobe was the only guy on the bus, and that spoke volumes to me — he’s the best player in the game, yet he’s always willing to come work on his game, so that kind of motivated me and Jeff. He went by himself, he got a lot of shots up, and by the time he was done you could see he had gotten better over that hour. Like I said, it was a big inspiration to me and Jeff.”
Overcoming obstacles
John Celestand wrote a great piece on his blog about why Kobe Bryant inspires him (they were teammates briefly). I will paraphrase here to tell the story, but there is a link below where you can read the whole thing. Kobe was always the first one to practice. John hated that Kobe always beat him in; John had always been the first one to the gym in high school and college. However, one day Kobe broke the wrist on his shooting hand…John thought that this was his chance. He figured Kobe wouldn’t even show up for practice. But when he walked in the next day, he already heard the ball bouncing. Kobe was already in the gym with a full sweat going, cast on his right hand, getting up shots with his left hand! A couple days later, Kobe almost beat John in a game of H-O-R-S-E (Kobe was playing left handed).
The Work Ethic
From the quotes mentioned before, it is clear that Kobe’s peers view him as the hardest working guy in the NBA, but I thought I would share a couple extra stories.
The first is from a trainer from Cincinnati, named Rob. You can find a link below to see the whole story. Rob was with Team USA during training camp as a trainer at their camp in Vegas (his past training experience was with the Bengals). Rob foolishly offered to meet with Kobe if he wanted any conditioning work. Kobe called Rob at 4:15AM and asked if he could meet. By the time Rob arrived some time before 5AM, Kobe was already drenched in sweat. Rob worked out with Kobe for about 2 hours, then went home and tried to rest a bit, he was beat. He went back to the gym at 11AM for the team’s real training session…and Kobe had never left
One other interesting thing to note is that Kobe goes through an intense game-day workout. He actually does hard weight training sessions on the days of games. This is the norm for Kobe.
Details and off-the-court behavior
Kobe ices his knees 20 minutes at a time, three times per day. He watches scouting DVDs in his down time. He is known for eating a strict diet (generally chicken, rice, and broccoli). He long ago gave up the snacks he liked when he was younger: sugar cookies, sour patch kids, pizza… It is all lean meats, fish, and vegetables these days!
There is a tremendous amount here for any basketball player at any stage in their career to learn from. It is easy to make an excuse. It is easy to take a day off or to find a reason to not workout. But these are all choices. Kobe made the choice to practice with his left hand when his right wrist was broke. Kobe makes the choice to get up at 4AM and start practicing. If you want to be good, you just have to make a choice. It is not a sacrifice if you are doing something you love; it is just a choice to get better. What choice will you make?
Photo Credit:
Sources:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=sheridan_chris&page=USA-Durant-100721
http://www.tickld.com/x/i-knew-kobe-bryant-was-dedicated-but-this
He has 25 years of experience playing basketball, training basketball players, and coaching basketball. The World of Hoops provides intelligent and intense basketball training to take basketball players to the next level.
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