Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bean Bryantis an American retired professional basketball player. He played his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association. He entered the NBA directly from high school and won five NBA championships with the Lakers. Bryant is an 18-time All-Star, 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, and 12-time member of the All-Defensive team. He led the NBA in scoring during two seasons, and ranks third on both the league's all-time regular season scoring and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth23 August 1978
CityPhiladelphia, PA
CountryUnited States of America
I'm proud of us. We came back and played hard. We got into a big hole in the first quarter but we were able to fight back. Late in the fourth quarter, we were able to make a push and give ourselves an opportunity to win the game. Both teams played hard, it's a shame somebody had to lose.
You want to come out here and play good basketball. The fans here know their basketball and want to see good basketball.
And now the shoe's on the other foot. When I was going through it, I wanted people to be patient with me. I'm just reciprocating.
All in all, we feel like we're playing extremely well.
Everything negative - pressure, challenges - is all an opportunity for me to rise.
I have played a lot of playoff basketball and I have never had a game quite like this, with our backs against the wall, seemingly out of it, and us just battling back and getting this win. We matured about 10 to 15 years today.
I love him. I've been fortunate to have sat down and talked with him in the past about basketball things and stuff like that. He's an amazing coach. If he's available to be considered, I'm sure he's one of the guys that Mitch and Dr. Buss would consider.
People look at my competitive spirit, and they automatically attach it to the thing that's most similar, most easily recognizable, which is Michael [Jordan's] competitive spirit. I'm different. I enjoy building. I enjoy the process of putting the puzzle together, and then the byproduct of that, the consequence of that, is beating somebody. That becomes the cherry on top, the icing on the cake.
Once you open your eyes and start looking around you, you start picking up things that are very obvious.
You can't go and anticipate what it is that you want to see. You just have to be present. Be where you are.
The hunger [to success] is the same, no matter what it is that you're doing. It's like an unquenchable thirst to learn more, or to feel like you could have done more, and to be brutally honest and self critical, which is very hard to do. It's easy, and human nature is to just blame somebody else. It's very, very hard to self assess.
The thing that's most enjoyable to me is not actually beating someone [in the game]. It's the process of coming up with the blueprint of beating that I enjoy. That's a huge flip, so for me I enjoy building. I enjoy coming up.
I think that game is a testament to what happens when you put no ceiling to what you're capable of doing.
He [Phil Jackson] is such a basketball genius in terms of the details of the game, the little nuances of the game and the rhythm of the game.