NBA 75: At No. 10, Kobe Bryant let his work ethic and devotion to the game define his iconic career with Lakers (2024)

(Editor’s note: Welcome back toThe Athletic NBA 75. We’re re-running our top 40 players to count down every day from Sept. 8-Oct. 17, the day before the opening of the 2022-23NBA season. This piece was first published on Feb. 7, 2022.)

“When it came to basketball, I had no fear. … I wasn’t scared of missing, looking bad, or being embarrassed. That’s because I always kept the end result, the long game, in my mind. I always focused on the fact that I had to try something to get it, and once I got it, I’d have another tool in my arsenal. If the price was a lot of work and a few missed shots, that was OK.” — Kobe Bryant, “The Mamba Mentality: How I Play.”

When Kobe Bryant was firing those four crunch-time airballs into the Delta Center rafters in Salt Lake City on May 12, 1997 — an audacious rookie ending the Lakers’ season in the kind of fearless fashion that would prove so formative in the years to come — DeMar DeRozan was a 7-year-old kid from nearby Compton, Calif., who cried when the Jazz moved on. Little did he know he would one day consider Bryant a mentor and confidante before his tragic passing 23 years later.

When Bryant was winning his first of five titles three years later — a three-peat beginning with Shaquille O’Neal by his side and Reggie Miller’s Indiana Pacers in his wake — Steph Curry was an 11-year-old growing up in Charlotte, N.C. His father, Dell, played for the NBA’s Hornets, meaning Steph would get to see Bryant’s journey to greatness in person from time to time. More than 14 years would pass before Bryant’s pat on Curry’s backside during a preseason gamewould be widely seen as the ultimate sign of respect.

When Bryant’s playing days came to a fitting end on April 13, 2016, in that 60-points-on-50-shots goodbye game against the Jazz, the one that was such a perfect embodiment of his unapologetic and relentless style, Devin Booker was a 19-year-old Phoenix Suns guard whose rookie season was coming to a close against the Clippers on that very same night.

Four years later, not long after Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, and seven others went down in that helicopter crash in Calabasas, Calif., on Jan. 26, 2020, Booker would have Bryant’s words of wisdom — “Be legendary” — tattooed on his right arm as a way of remembering a message left from his old friend.

If you talk to today’s stars, the ones whose childhoods were full of Bryant moments and who would lean on him for lessons during his later years, it’s almost as if he’s not gone at all. They talk about the “Mamba Mentality” as if he’s still preaching the power of perseverance with that fiery look upon his face. His defiant spirit, that irrational confidence in one’s self that served him so well during those two decades of dominance, is carried on now by premiere players who started studying him when they were young. What’s more, it’s the distinctive trait that landed him at No. 10 on The Athletic’s list of 75 greatest players of all time.

The totality of Bryant’s life story will always be divisive. The son of Joe “Jellybean” and Pam Bryant, from Philadelphia to Italy and back again for those Lower Merion High days, Kobe was a complicated character long before the 2003 rape allegation that was settled out of court (and with Bryant issuing an apology to the accuser in which he acknowledged that they saw the sexual encounter differently).

By the time of his passing, with Bryant and his wife, Vanessa, the proud parents of four daughters and his early off-court accomplishments even including an Oscar, Bryant’s tattered image had been through some repair. Many had moved on from his tarnished reputation, while Bryant turned his attention to an array of projects. He had his own production company. His support for the WNBA was impactful and substantive. His passion for coaching Gianna’s basketball teams, in turn, was the driving force behind his Mamba Sports Academy in Southern California, which opened its doors to so many young girlsandNBA pros.

By the summer of 2019, his invite-only minicamp had quickly become the stuff of legend.

His post-playing plan — it was quite clear — had been in place for a long time.

But in terms of his game and the current conversation among his contemporaries about his contributions, Bryant is as revered as they come. He was their Michael Jordan.

They know his résumé:

• Fourth all-time in scoring (33,643 points, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone and LeBron James)
• Fourth in playoff scoring (5,640 points, behind James, Jordan and Abdul-Jabbar)
• Second all-time in All-Star appearances (18, tied with LBJ and behind only Abdul-Jabbar’s 19)
• Four All-Star game MVPs (tied with Bob Pettit for the all-time lead); posthumously, the trophy was named after him
• Eighth in regular-season minutes (48,637), fourth in playoff minutes (behind James, Jordan, and Abdul-Jabbar)
• Eleven All-NBA first-team selections (tied with Karl Malone for second most, behind only James’ 13)
• One-time MVP (2007-08, when he averaged 28.3 points, 6.3 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game)
• Two-time scoring champ (2005-06, when he averaged 35.4 points per game; 2006-07, when he averaged 31.6)
• Nine All-Defensive first-team selections (tied with Kevin Garnett, Jordan and Gary Payton for the most in league history)
• One of 10 players to average at least 25 points, five rebounds and four assists during a course of a career
• His 81-point outburst in Toronto on Jan. 22, 2006, was the second-highest scoring game of all time, trailing only Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game that came three decades before

But more importantly, Curry (Golden State), Booker (Phoenix) and DeRozan (Chicago) know his regimen. In an attempt to get a better understanding of how Bryant continues to impact the league today, I recently spoke with those three about their memories of him. They can’t speak for everyone in the league, but it’s an All-Star caliber cross-section of players who knew him well and who, like so many others, were influenced by his one-of-a-kind ways.

The Mamba Mentality

Bryant, discussing the state of the Lakers and, more specifically, then-Lakers big man Dwight Howard in a conversation we had on Jan. 26, 2013:

“For us to have a team that’s confrontational and on edge brings out the competitive spirit of everybody else, you know what I’m saying? If everybody is just relaxed and happy-go-lucky and this, that and the other, then that’s the personality we’ll have as a team. And then you run into a team that’s a confrontational team, and it’s like a bus. That’s what happened to us in 2008. Everything was really easy for us, real smooth. …Everybody liked each other. And then we got to the Finals (against Boston), and we ran into a bus. The Celtics – those motherf*ckers just beat the sh*t out of us (in six games).”

“Yeah (Howard can fit in that). I don’t wonder (that) anymore. It’s just a matter of learning. It’s a process for him. He wants to be one of the greats of all time, and to do that you have to learn from the greats of all time – be it Bill Russell, be it Shaq. I mean Shaq was a moody, temperamental dude. So if you watch all the big men who have come before, you start to see a common denominator. Wilt (Chamberlain) — God Bless him — was phenomenal, but he didn’t have it. Russell and (those) guys win (repeatedly) — Jordan, Magic, myself. You’ve got a little asshole engine. … I’m a problem solver. I try to figure things out, come hell or high water.”

While the conversations with Curry and DeRozan were over the phone, I spoke with Booker on Dec. 21 in the same spot where Bryant spent so many nights explaining his maniacal competitive wiring to the media: The bowels of the building formerly known as the Staples Center.

“Yeah, I’m glad they made it Crypto,” Booker said as he stood near a crate that had Bryant’s picture featured on the side. “Just let that legacy live.”

There’s certain lore to the loading dock inside the place they now call Crypto.com Arena. Once the Lakers moved there from The Great Western Forum in 1999, the ramp that leads out to Chick Hearn Court became the place where their greats headed home for the night — typically victorious.

But Bryant, more than most, was often willing to extend the conversations about his team that had begun in the postgame locker room. The Bryant comments above took place during one such discussion when the Lakers had Bryant, Pau Gasol, Metta World Peace, Steve Nash, Dwight Howard and had just lost to Utah, falling to 18-25 on the season.

On that night, less than six months before Howard chose to leave Los Angeles for Houston, Bryant discussed his no-punches-pulled leadership style that hadn’t worked well with his latest big man partner. His well-chronicled edge, and the ruthlessness with which he ruled the Lakers locker room, was always a significant part of the great Bryant debate. But as Curry sees it, the ends justified the means.

“There was always that talk about him as a teammate,” Curry said. “But whether you liked him or not, or whether you liked playing with him or not, he was such a dog, such a fiery guy, that you knew he was going to push you. And when it showed up on the court, it almost brought a level of intensity out that, if you didn’t know you had it, you were envious of it almost.”

Bryant’s approach wasn’t always met with such reverence.

As author Jeff Pearlman chronicled in his book, “Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty,” O’Neal once slapped Bryant across the face in a pick-up game in 1998 after an argument about their alpha-male status had broken out. It was one of many times the two were at odds during their well-chronicled feud. But in classic Bryant form, he insisted that the in-fighting elevated his team.

“After the fight, I got pissed and scored every point and won the game,” he told Jimmy Kimmel in March 2018.

In the end, that fight for superiority between Bryant and O’Neal would prove to be their undoing. Just this week, more than 18 years after the rift led the Lakers to trade O’Neal to Miami in the summer of 2004, the big man shared regrets about how it all ended while discussing the divide between Philadelphia’s Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid.

“I realized this after I left L.A.,” O’Neal said. “I could’ve won eight, nine championships with that man, instead of (us) both arguing about whose team it is. … When it’s all said and done, you don’t want to be saying to yourself, ‘I wish I coulda.’”

From O’Neal to Howard to his years-long attempt to turn Gasol into a ‘Black Swan,’ Bryant’s tension with teammates was typically rooted in the belief that they weren’t approaching the game with the necessary level of aggression or commitment. And when it came to his work ethic, the stories about his maniacal methods were never in short supply.

On that four-airball night in Utah that ended his rookie season, for example, Bryant would later share that he went straight from the Los Angeles airport to Pacific Palisades High to shoot until sunrise.

“Those shots let me know what I needed to work on the most: my strength,” Bryant said in his “Mamba Mentality” book. “That’s all the airballs did for me. In that game, nerves weren’t 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. … I felt — I knew — that my future was undeniable and no one, not a person or a play, could derail it.”

Right about the time Bryant was finding his way in the NBA, Booker was learning to walk while growing up in central Michigan. But when Booker got older, and although he was a die-hard Detroit Pistons fan, his father made sure he paid attention to Bryant’s game.

“I’m in the front yard emulating sh*t — like, Rip Hamilton was my favorite player, but I’m thinking Kobe the whole time,” said Booker, whose father, Melvin, played internationally and had a brief NBA career in the mid-1990s (he played 32 games but never faced Bryant). “I’m going Kobe instincts. So that’s the earliest memories, and then just through college, into the NBA, it’s just years of studying film. And then my dad, putting me on Kobe’s film young age, watching footwork.

“You hear those stories of him waking up at 4 and 5 and people getting to the gym and he’s already finished his workout. And you hear those stories at a young age about your senior in your high school class, and some of those are stories and you know they’re fabricated. But with him, like every single one of those stories is 100 percent true all the way through. I think that’s the difference between it. A lot of people have a work ethic, a lot of people put the work in and (focus) on their body and do that, but there’s little slippage here and there. The thing with him is there’s no slippage.”

Like Booker, DeRozan’s mastery of the midrange game had everything to do with the lessons learned from Bryant.

“Man, it’s the relentless and countless, nonstop repetitions of doing the same thing over and over and over and over,” DeRozan said of Bryant’s impact on his routine. “So when you are in those situations, it doesn’t feel like nothing new. You don’t feel rushed. You don’t feel panicked. And it comes with time, continuously doing the same thing over and over, working on something over and over and over and over. And so it becomes damn near redundant.

“But it becomes second nature, in muscle memory. Your mentality, your mind, the confidence, just continuously working on your skill. Late nights, early mornings throughout the days, days when you don’t feel like doing anything. I got a lot of that mentality from Kobe.”

Mentor role

Bryant, during his final season on Feb. 21, 2016, discussed his relationship with Jordan:

“When I came into the league, and matching up against him, what I found … is that he was extremely open to having a relationship — a mentor relationship. And giving me a great amount of advice, an amazing amount of detail, strategies, workout regimens and things like that. Seriously, I don’t think people understand the impact he has had on me as a player and as a leader.”

For Bryant, Jordan was always the gold standard. The lifelong goal. He had those six titles. The GOAT status. Every shot and move you could imagine. The flight patterns. Bryant wanted to replicate all of it.

But he wasn’t just chasing a basketball ghost. No, as Bryant would reflect on more as he grew older, his relationship with Jordan had started early and evolved from there. That deep connection was there for all to see when Jordan gave a tearful speech about his friend at Bryant’s memorial service.

Yet for much of Bryant’s career, he kept his peers at bay. His focus was on the fear factor, the intimidation that he always tried to inspire in his opponents. There was no better example of this than his famously distant relationship with LeBron James, one that would only become more meaningful very late in his career.

Over time, though, Bryant had begun to give back in much the same way Jordan had with him. And if you were a young player who was deemed worthy of respect by Bryant, that was enough to make you stick your chest out. Or, as was the case with Curry, your butt.

For Curry, it was the Bryant ass pat in a 2014 preseason game that most believed was his hat-tip moment. Bryant had been hounding him down the floor, bullying him so much that Curry even stumbled as they crossed the half-court line.

He caught himself with his right hand, somehow keeping the dribble alive. Then came the right elbow into Bryant’s gut, the not-so-subtle shove creating just enough space for Curry to fire away. Splash.

“Whooaaa, from the other county,” Lakers announcer Bill Macdonald said on the call. “And Kobe slaps him on the behind, gives him a smile and says, ‘That’s good shootin’ kid.’”

Some 18.6 million YouTube views later, it’s clear the gesture sent an unmistakable message that Bryant thought highly of Curry’s talent. In Curry’s eyes, however, Bryant had made him feel like an elite player three years prior.

“It was my second year, and we were playing at Oracle and he was on the bench,” Curry said. “I did a dribble left and right in front of their bench and a little pump fake and then hit the shot off the glass. And they had the camera zoomed in on him, and he looked at me as I was going down the court and you could see him say ‘That MF-er is nice.’

“I didn’t see it in real time. I saw it afterward. He had said it under his breath and they caught him on the camera saying it and somebody sent it to me. It was dope. When I saw it, that was a ‘Wow!’ moment. It’s corny, but it was one of those when-your-idols-become-your-rivals type vibes. But it was awesome. He recognized my skill level, and I didn’t even really know who I was as a player, so that was another type of confidence builder. Like, I’m doing something right.”

Bryant left Booker feeling that same way, signing those “Be Legendary” shoes after their game on March 23, 2016, and spending 15 minutes talking with him. Curry had already become an MVP and a champion. But as Booker shared at the time, Bryant was already imploring him to knock the mighty Warriors from their perch.

“He was just telling me, ‘Just keep working, you know? Never settle in this league. It’s up for grabs,’ ” Booker had told reporters. “He said, ‘You know, Steph and Klay (Thompson) — obviously they’re doing their thing right now, but the league’s up for grabs and just keep working.”

On that same night, Bryant would explain the way he viewed these relationships.

“I think the most important thing about my career is being able to pass it on and have the next generation of athletes embody the same spirit and learn some of the same techniques and have that same mindset,” Bryant said. “That’s the coolest thing to me. Playing against Booker tonight, I mean he went straight to my move the first time he caught it. ‘You don’t have to beat me on my move man!’ But it was great to see. It was great to see because I remember I did the same thing with MJ.”

Three All-Star selections and a 2021 NBA Finals appearance later, and with the Suns currently having the league’s best record (42-10), Booker now takes great pride in the fact that he’s living up to those great expectations.

“I’m left with ‘Be Legendary,’” he explained in our chat. “That’s what I tell people. I don’t put a cap on any of the greatness of what’s possible. I don’t. It’s funny, I remember listening to an interview after I had 70 (points against Boston on March 24, 2017), and Kobe was talking on air and he says, ‘My favorite part of him having 70 is I asked (Booker), ‘Could he do it again?’ And he said, ‘I don’t see why not.’ And that impressed him. Hearing that little tidbit, it’s (a reminder that) I don’t put a cap on what’s possible and what I’m gonna do. I just continue to work.”

As for DeRozan, his most public mentorship moment with Bryant was something different altogether. One day after Bryant’s 39th birthday — Aug. 24, 2017 — he issued personal challenges via social media to famed rapper Kendrick Lamar (“revolutionize the music program at Centennial High School”), then-Boston Celtics player Isaiah Thomas (“make the All-NBA first team next season”) and DeRozan.

“I challenge you to rekindle a lost friendship from your youth in Compton,” he wrote to DeRozan, who was with the Toronto Raptors back then.

The meaning behind the message was a mystery to DeRozan — at least at first.

“If you ever know anything about him, he’d challenge you to the point where you’d question the question,” DeRozan said. “That was the beauty of him making you search and look deeper, (to find a) place of understanding of what the next test is for you.

“It led to something. But you think back to that, and you’re like, ‘Damn, I was confused when he brought that up. But you know, when something reveals itself later on, you’re like, ‘Damn, unconsciously this is happening and I didn’t even know it.’ … He’d always find different ways to challenge you.”

Fond memories of a friend

Bryant, in February 2015, during our conversation about his documentary, “Muse”:

“As you get older, you start to understand. You start to have a broader perspective and understand that there’s greater growth to be had if you don’t just hold onto the discovery itself. If you share that discovery, then you wind up having an influence. It’s not saying, ‘Do this or do that,’ or ‘My way is the right way.’ The best way to do it is to say, ‘This is how I got here. This is my journey.’ And then leave it up to the viewer to interpret it however they see fit.”

When Bryant made that late-career decision to pull back the curtain, sharing his secrets with the NBA masses after all those years of being so guarded, it was a gift that so many of them will never forget. And the devastating fact that he’s gone, of course, means that those memories will be cherished even more than before.

For DeRozan, that means game-winning shots — like the ones he hit on back-to-back nights earlier this season when he became the first player in league history to achieve that feat — are followed by thoughts of Bryant’s influence. That was the case, he said, when he buried a one-legged three-pointer at the buzzer to beat Indiana on Dec. 26.

“The first thing I thought about was when (Bryant) hit the one-legged shot over D-Wade (on Dec. 4, 2009),” DeRozan said. “It’s just crazy. That’s kind of where I got my whole imagination from hitting game-winning shots was from Jordan and Kobe.

“It’s one of those moments where you think back to all the people who you watched do it and tried to emulate — whether it’s at a trash can, in the kitchen, whatever it may be.”

After Booker spent those 15 postgame minutes sitting with Bryant in 2016, he knew right away that he wanted more. So he leaned on a mutual friend: Robert Lara, the Lakers’ longtime security guard who was Bryant’s personal detail and has a long history with Booker’s alma mater, Kentucky, as well.

“(Lara) would always tell me, ‘Come hook up with Kobe! Come hook up with Kobe!’ And it never worked out,” Booker said. “But there was a couple of times where ‘G’ (Gianna) came to Phoenix for a couple of girls’ basketball tournaments, so I came by and met the team. I remember him putting the girls to bed and us getting some real time. Two, three hours, sitting down, glass of wine and got to break it down. We’re (talking) more off the floor. I met them at their hotel. It was just me, him and one of my good friends. Nobody else in the room. I feel fate (in that moment). I feel fate.

“It was everything. I kind of hold that conversation close, because it was just me, him and my homeboy (Mike, a childhood friend). It’s crazy. It didn’t feel real walking out. We talked about it before he even passed, like I can’t believe we got that time.”

Curry’s last visit with Bryant had very little to do with the game. Their relationship had changed over the years, with the decade between them no longer relevant and the mutual admiration at an all-time high.

Bryant was three years into retirement by then, with a booming enterprise that inspired Curry, in large part, because of how it blended so well with who the former Lakers star had become. His love letter to the game that he wrote heading into retirement — “Dear Basketball” — had become his award-winning animated short film. Bryant was the first African-American to win an Oscar in that category.

He had his own company, Kobe Inc., and young adult novels that were produced through his Granity Studios. There was an ESPN show, “Detail,” in which he broke down tape of a new player on every episode. And the coaching — always, the coaching.

Curry, like so many players before him, simply wanted to learn more. And so they talked — one last time.

“I was in LA and had dinner with him and one of his business associates,” said Curry, who has two daughters and a son with his wife, Ayesha. “He was an open book. But I remember just sitting down and him taking me on a journey of what he had been doing before he retired, in that first year after he retired, and then what he was currently doing. All of it sounded amazing because it was true to him and authentic in terms of what story he was trying to tell, and what was important to him at that moment.

“And a lot of it was centered around his kids, and the girls, so that was the most inspirational thing. … That was the last time I saw him in person.”

Career NBA stats: G: 1,346, Pts.: 25.0, Reb.: 5.2, Ast.: 4.7, FG%: 44.7, FT%: 83.7, Win Shares: 172.2, PER: 22.9

The AthleticNBA 75 Panel points: 1,003 | Hollinger GOAT Points: 475.1

Achievements: NBA MVP (’08), 15-time All-NBA, 18-time All-Star, NBA champ (’00, ’01, ’02, ’09, ’10), Finals MVP (’09, ’10), Scoring champ (’06, ’07), Olympic gold (’08, ’12), Hall of Fame (’21), NBA 75th Anniversary team (’21)

(Illustration: Wes McCabe / The Athletic; Photo: Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)