You Don’t Have to Be An Athlete to Learn From Kobe
Kobe Bryant is gone.
The 18-time All-Star, five-time NBA champion, two-time gold medalist and Hall of Famer perished in a helicopter crash Sunday, along with his 13-year old daughter Gianna and seven others.
Although Kobe is no longer on this earth, his impact will continue to be felt for years to come.
As Babe Ruth told Benny in The Sandlot, heroes get remembered, but legends never die.
How do you preserve the legacy of a legend? By taking their best characteristics and implementing them into your everyday life.
More than any athlete in my lifetime, Kobe led a life that could be emulated for success by anyone.
Now, not everyone is born 6–6 with a 40-inch vertical leap. Not everyone inherits their DNA from a professional basketball star.
There’s only 450 NBA players, in a world with a population of over 7.5 billion. Chances are, you’re not going to reach the pinnacle of sports, or your profession, or anything.
But what everyone can take from Kobe Bryant is his maniacal pursuit of greatness.
How do you achieve greatness?
For one, by working your goddamn ass off.
Bryant’s work ethic and dedication were enough to make even the greatest NBA players feel lazy.
During the 2008 Olympics, Kobe’s peers — which included future Hall of Famers like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — were awe-inspired by Kobe’s desire to improve.
“We’re in Las Vegas and we all come down for team breakfast at the start of the whole training camp,” Bosh said. “And Kobe comes in with ice on his knees and with his trainers and stuff. He’s got sweat drenched through his workout gear. And I’m like, ‘It’s 8 o’clock in the morning, man. Where in the hell is he coming from?’”
Wade added, “Everybody else just woke up… We’re all yawning, and he’s already three hours and a full workout into his day.”
There are countless stories detailing Kobe’s dedication to his craft.
He even received the ultimate compliment from the man he emulated and was compared the most to, Michael Jordan.
Roland Lazenby, author of Michael Jordan: The Life, wrote, “(Jordan) said Kobe had done that work to deserve the comparison. He says Kobe’s the only one to have done the work.”
As a kid whose first exposure to NBA basketball was through the Kobe/Shaq Lakers dynasty of the early 2000s, I despised Kobe for breaking up that team, and I know I wasn’t the only one.
It was easy to love Shaq — a hilarious, larger-than-life character who was arguably the most dominant player the game has ever seen.
And it was just as easy to dislike Kobe — a prickly, cantankerous and sometimes selfish player, who frankly didn’t seem like a fun teammate to play with.
But as their careers wound down, I began to realize how much more I respected Kobe than Shaq.
Countless guys have come into the NBA with similar physical skill sets to Kobe, and most of them are long forgotten.
There’s never been anyone like Shaq — a physical force of nature who had a massive advantage over every player of his era due to his sheer power and dominance.
But while Kobe was spending countless hours in the gym improving himself, Shaq was out partying and getting fat, relying on his God-given talents to carry him.
As crazy as it is to say about a four-time NBA champion, 15-time All-Star and one of the 10–15 greatest players in NBA history, Shaq could have been much better than he was.
Kobe was correct when he recently said that with all the natural talents he was blessed with, Shaq should have been the GOAT.
Kobe and Shaq were not on a level playing field athletically, but it’s debatable which one of them ended up having the better career.
But what’s not debatable is this — Kobe extracted every ounce out of his talent, and Shaq didn’t.
You can’t achieve greatness without putting in the hard work, and Kobe clearly put in the work.
But there was much more to his legacy than just his work ethic.
Mamba Mentality
It wasn’t just his dedication that separated Kobe from his peers, it was also his attitude. Kobe wanted to rip his opponent’s heart out, stomp on it, then eat it as a snack.
Is that mindset necessary for success in everyday life? Probably not.
But if you look into what Kobe actually considered the Mamba Mentality to be, it’s clear that anyone can channel it to benefit themselves.
The Mamba Mentality, in Kobe’s own words, is “to be able to constantly try to be the best version of yourself. It’s a constant quest to try to be better today than you were yesterday.”
In another interview, Bryant said the Mamba Mentality is “all about focusing on the process and trusting in the hard work when it matters most. It’s the ultimate mantra for the competitive spirit.”
After high school, a lot of us stop playing sports. Maybe you never even played sports growing up.
But everyone has experienced the feeling of competition in some form, whether it was in a classroom, in an office or anywhere else where we pushed ourselves to be better.
We can be competitors every day. And the opponent is ourselves.
In most cases in life, the only one holding you to a standard of excellence is yourself. Kobe could have worked a little less hard and still have been an All-Star, and maybe even a Hall of Famer.
But would he have been a legend?
Every little decision you make affects your life, whether it’s what time you set your alarm for, what you eat for lunch, how you spend your time after work, etc.
Are you doing what it takes to be a better version of yourself than you were yesterday? Are you pushing yourself to your limits, or are you content with mediocrity?
The Mamba Mentality isn’t just about having a stone-cold killer instinct or an unhealthy obsession with something. It’s about competing with yourself every single day to be better.
Playing Through Pain
The most impressive thing about Kobe on the court wasn’t his athleticism, his impeccable footwork or his ability to sink seemingly impossible shots.
It was that the dude found a way to get on the court no matter what he was going through.
I’ve never seen a professional athlete play through as many injuries as Bryant (Brett Favre and Cal Ripken are the only ones who rival him in my lifetime).
“No matter what the injury — unless it’s completely debilitating — I’m going to be the same player I’ve always been,” Bryant said. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll make some tweaks, some changes, but I’m still coming.”
A lot of us go through pain at one point or another, and it’s not always physical.
We’re all dealing with our own shit, but that’s not an excuse to pack it in when things get tough. We’re not going to be operating at our best 100 percent of the time, but as long as we give our best efforts, there will be nothing to regret.
If we keep marching forward, pain can’t stop us.
Reinvention
One of the saddest aspects of Kobe’s death is that we won’t get to see how fascinating the second half of his life would have been.
When athletes retire, oftentimes they’ll go into broadcasting, scouting or coaching, because it’s what they know best. When you’ve done the same thing for your entire life, it’s hard to try something new.
For someone who didn’t go to college, Kobe had a thirst for education that the vast majority of people don’t possess. He reached out to icons in other industries like Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey and JK Rowling to pick their brains and learn from them.
Within two years of retiring from the NBA, Kobe had already won an Academy Award for his animated short film “Dear Basketball.” As impressive as it is for a filmmaking newcomer to win an Oscar so quickly, it really shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise.
Kobe had a relentless pursuit of knowledge, and his success in filmmaking proved that he could achieve greatness in areas other than basketball.
It’s a reminder that we don’t have to pigeonhole ourselves into one box or category. Even if you’ve been in the same profession for 30 years, it’s still possible to pursue something else.
Obviously, most of us don’t have millions of dollars in our bank account to fall back on, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to call up any celebrity in the world. But there’s nothing stopping us from educating ourselves and trying something new.
Even if it’s not a new profession, it could be finding a new hobby or interest to become a more well-rounded person.
It’s never too late to make a change.
Life Is Precious
Tragedies have a way of putting things into perspective.
There have been so many amazing tributes to Bryant in the days after his death, from SportsCenter anchor Elle Duncan’s “I’m a Girl Dad” monologue, to the in-game gestures across all levels of sports, to Lakers fans gathering outside of the Staples Center to mourn the loss of one of their heroes.
But what has stuck with me the most was the words by former Duke star Jay Williams.
It shouldn’t take loss to appreciate what you have, but that’s too often the case.
Kobe’s death has affected so many people — even those who aren’t basketball fans.
And I think a part of it is because of his stature. Certain celebrities get to a point where they don’t even seem like real people anymore, but rather mythological creatures.
Kobe was like a superhero, and superheroes don’t die. They live forever, infinitely adding new adventures to their story.
It seemed like Kobe was invincible, but he wasn’t. And neither are we.
We’re all born with a death sentence, so we have to live our lives like our time could end at any moment.
We don’t get enough time on this earth to waste any of it, and yet we constantly find ways to procrastinate on the things that we should be doing.
If there’s any silver lining in Kobe’s death, it’s that it inspired many to reach out to their loved ones — whether it’s those that they see every day or those that they don’t communicate with as much as they should — and tell them how much they care.
And hopefully Kobe’s death — and his life — inspires others to do everything they can to reach their full potential. He didn’t waste any time on this earth, and neither should we.
Kobe is gone, but the Mamba Mentality can live on.
