YouSaid · the spoken record

Kobe Bryant

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29
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2022-10-19
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2022-10-19
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  1. “You asked for my hustle, I gave you my heart because it came with so much more. I played through the sweat and the hurt, not because challenge called me, but because you called me. I did everything for you, because that's what you do when someone makes you feel as alive as you made me feel. You gave a six year old boy his lake or dream, and I'll always love you for it. But I can't love you obsessively for much longer. This season is all I have left to give. My heart can take the pounding, my mind can handle the grind, but my body knows it's time to say goodbye, and that's okay. I'm ready to let you go. I want you to know now so we can both savor every moment we have left together, the good and the bad. We have given each other all that we have, and we both know no matter what I do next, I'll always be that kid”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That's the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that. Bryant was the one who had done the work in the face of the example he presented, Jordan said. Says his retirement was announced in a love letter he wrote to the game, citing his obsessive passion for the sport, and its lat letter that I want to close on. Basketball. From the moment I started rolling my dad's tube socks and shooting imaginary game-winning shots in the great western form, I knew one thing was real. I fell in love with you. A love so deep I gave you my all. From my mind and body to my spirit and soul. As a six year old boy deeply in love with you, I never saw the end of the tunnel. I only saw myself running out of one, and so I ran. I ran up and down every court. After every loose ball for you.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “And so, this is what Schaefer said. A game would end, and we would fly to the next city. We'd get in at three in the morning, and he'd want me to come and do a stretch with him instead of just going to bed. He couldn't switch it off. On the flight, while his teammates were sleeping, Bryan would watch the game he just played to review his and the team's performance. Then he'd watch a scouting video of his next opponent.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And so the rest of the book is on Kobe's Drive to get back to the championship. That's all he's like, I have one goal, one determinant in whether my career was a success or not. And it's like how many rings did I get? And so there's many pages where I don't have any highlights. And then I get to page like this where there's two or three pages in a row where I highlight almost the entire thing. And so I'm going to read my note first and I'll leave this in the show notes as well. This is important. There's another four ideas spread out on his pages. Search for your limits. Extreme personal practice. Resourcefulness. Find a way. That's number three. And number four, study the greats. And so it says, if the scoring displays, meaning he's just scoring a ton of points, forty, fifty, sixty points a game. If the scoring display showed anything, they revealed that Bryant was clearly a man in search of his limits.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Social skills. He did not realize how to get through relationships and interactions with other people. He was a young guy and it took the course of his career, just like Steve Jobs, to figure out how to deal with people on a one-on-one basis and in a team atmosphere. And he was not perfect in this regard even if he improved, right? They're never going to be perfect at it. They're just so different than anybody else. And so we see an example of this. This is what Kobe told his teams after they missed the playoffs. He'd already won three championships at this time, but Shaq's not on the team anymore. And it says the Lakers missed the playoffs. It had been 11 years since the last time they had missed. And this is what somebody in the locker room said happened. So after the last game in the locker room, the coach goes to the usual bullshit. You know, you guys played hard, blah, blah, blah, trying to be positive. I appreciate your effort. Kobe says, I've got to say something. He stands up, points around the room, and says, you motherfuckers don't belong in the same court with me. You're all shit. And he walked out of the locker room.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Are secret weapon, O'Neill would say, of Mumford. Bryant was content to discuss the mental elements of competition with Mumford, as were his teammates. It was good because it gave people a chance to talk about the things that might be on their mind, the hype, the pressure, Bryant explained. I think it's good for them to talk about those things. It's increased our performance a lot. I'm surprised other teams don't do this kind of stuff. Working with George helps us get to the issues or helps us get issues out of the way before they even start.”

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  7. “We also see that Kobe's willing to ask anybody for advice if he feels you have talent that he lacks or information he lacks, he's going to go straight to you even if you're a competitor. At this time, he's like, I'm making progress on offense, but my defense is lacking. So he goes up. This takes place during All Star weekend. And it says another important moment happened when Seattle's Gary Payton helped Bryant understand screen enroll defense. So again, go back to what Steve Job said. Most people are never even going to do that. Bryant has a giant ego, thinks he's going to be the best ever, and he's still willing. He's like, hey, Gary, help me with this, man. I don't know how you do what you do. This is huge. And I try to copy this as well in my own life. So it says Gary Payton helped Brian understand screen and world defense. I don't think Gary knows how much he helped me, Brian said. Bryant demonstrated dramatic defense improvement afterward.”

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  8. “Jordan was in the development of his own career. Bryant said that getting advice from Jordan is like getting advice from the Buddha that sits on top of the mountain who has everything figured out and passes on some of his knowledge to the next guy who's trying to climb that mountain.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “In my mind, became a reality. I have visualized success, then created the reality from that image. Great athletes, business people, inventors, and achievers from all walks of life seem to know this secret.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Kobe. I think he's the one that came up with, or maybe he was the greatest expert on the triangle offense. And he's like this wise old man, and Kobe essentially uses an idea from Star Wars. He's like, oh, Texas is going to be my Yoda. So it says when Tex winner showed up to help Coach Lakers, Brian immediately dubbed him his Yoda. He had this very symbolic Kobe that is. Kobe had this very symbolic metaphorical way of seeing things. He viewed the world through the lens of a fabulous narrative. His favorite book had been the sci-fi fantasy Ender's game about a protagonist trained from a young age to face increasingly difficult challenges in order to save the world. The only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder to spin his fantasies around and around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality. Visualization was”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And so, his first few years, his coach is not playing him that much. He's not getting minutes. Kobe's getting depressed. And so he does something very, very smart here. Larry Ellison did the exact same thing when Oracle was going through rough times. He'd read biographies of great figures as a way to motivate himself and convince himself that things will get better. Kobe does the exact same thing. Part of his strategy for keeping his disappointment at bay was to focus on others who had faced far more difficult circumstances. I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson, Brian said. I was thinking about all the hard times that I'd go through this year and that it'd never compare to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective. He would also read fiction and do this as well. He actually left myself on this page is build your own world. And then we got to talk about all the founders that use this idea of visualization. So it says Kobe always loved Disney and Star Wars and Jedi Knights. When Tex winner, so Tex winner is this coach, Coach Jordan.”

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  12. “He's still a massive Magic Johnson fan, and he's going to copy something that Magic believed as well. And it says magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus. It was all about the ultimate prize, and there were no exceptions. You either won the NBA championship or you did not. There was no second place. Just one line on this page for you. Bryant was an intense introvert. Famously, there was a clause in Michael Jordan's contract called for the love of the game clause, meaning he could play basketball anytime and anywhere he wanted, which I guess was rare because from my understanding, NBA teams were trying to restrict when they could play basketball because they didn't want you to get injured. Kobe actually injures himself playing a pickup game in Venice Beach. And so I'm going to tell you about that. But then I thought Jerry West's response to this, considering he just drafted Kobe, was very interesting. So it says Kobe had injured his wrist playing at Venice Beach. I just couldn't believe that a guy would”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And he puts his hands up like, hey, stop. What you get from me, I'm getting goosebumps now. What you get from me is from him. I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice. That happens in entrepreneurship too if you listen to episode 107, which is the biography of Soul Price. Everybody knows the business Costco. The founder of Costco is this guy named Jim Senegal. Jim Senegal started working for sole price when he was like, I think he was a teenager. And later on, I think this is after sole price passes away. Jim had known him for like 50 years at that point. And a reporter's talking to him. He's like, oh, you've known Sol for a long time. You must have learned a lot from him. And he's like, no, I didn't learn a lot. Everything. Everything I know came from him. It's the same idea. When Kobe says stop what you get.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “He's talking to Kobe about this. He says, Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research. It held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games, I wrote founders in an exclamation points, because essentially you're walking around your pocket with a podcast that does this for you, right? Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research. It held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games. He'd pull them out and study them and do the moves. Look at what I added, Bryant would say, and then he would do a move. I think that's important to sit here and pause on this because this is not unique to Kobe, right? If you've seen the last dance, which is a fantastic documentary you should watch over and over again, the episode where Kobe appears in the last dance right before he tragically dies, right? He says something and he gives me goosebumps. Like I'm not kidding. And he says, I truly hate having discussions on who would win one or one or fans coming up to me saying, hey, Kobe, you'd beat him, Kobe. And he says, I'm like, yo.”

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  15. “Okay, so now we get to the point where Kobe's is going to the NBA. He's already made a decision. And this part is really important to understand is that imitation proceeds creation. This is something I learned from Stephen King, that it is perfectly normal for you to imitate other people before you create something unique, that is fundamental to the human experience. And we're seeing that here because Kobe is spending so much time. He's idolizing Michael Jordan. He's watching his game tape. He's studying over and over again. And so it says they were struck by how much Bryant was beginning to play the part of the Next Jordan. His head was shaved, just like Jordan. He talked just like Jordan. He had adopted many of Jordan's mannerisms. He's seventeen. And later on in the book, I'm pretty sure I have a highlight where Jordan is just like, stop this nonsense. Like, this is perfectly normal. Kobe copied me just like I copied the people before me. He's like, and Jordan even says, that's how human beings learn. And so one of the promoters that's, I think, working at Adidas, if I'm not mistaken, is talking about this. It says his name's Michael Harris. So he says...”

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  16. “We'd finish at nine, he'd stay to 11 every day. None of the pros were doing that. And so when I got to that part, I thought about another video that I saved. This is Kobe actually talking about how to get an edge, which can be applied to any domain, right? He says your job obviously be the best you can be. You want to train as much as you can as often as you can. Imagine you wake up at 3, you train four to six, relax, now you're back at it again 9 to 11. Relax, now you're back at it again 2 to 4. Relax, now you're back at it 7 to 9. Look at how much more training I have done just by starting at four. As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do their training and try to focus on improving their game, right? So he says, by year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer.”

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  17. “He won't be able to rebound. It took me three days after rookie camp. I found out, hey, this league is nothing. I can play in this league, and I will dominate in this league. And that is so important because he's like, wait, everybody, all what the critics were telling me, this is a critics don't know shit that you and I have talked about over and over again, right? The critics are saying I can't do this. I get to the NBA. I'm playing against other NBA players like, no, I can do this, and I'm actually way better than them too. I absolutely love love that video. And then we go back into Kobe's work ethic again. It's not just saying, hey, I'm good enough. No, it's like you have to back that up and you should be putting in the work to do so. It says, man, let me tell you something. That's when I first saw it. This is one of his high school teammates or the other high school players in this camp that he's in. Kobe's a senior in high school. We worked out choice a day. We would start at 10 in the morning. Kobe was there at 8. We'd get done at 12. Kobe would stay till 2. We'd start again at 7 at night. Kobe would be there at 12.”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So something important happens that was outside of Kobe's control, and it's the fact that when he was a senior in high school, he's able to play pickup games against NBA players because the NBA isn't a lockout. And this experience boosts his already excessive amount of confidence. So he plays these pickup games against NBA players, and this is what he says. I'm telling you, man, whenever you get a chance to play against these guys, don't be afraid, man. Just play your game. You'll be surprised. They go for all the moves that high school guys go for. And this is important because at the time, he's like, okay, maybe I should go to the NBA. He's like, maybe I should go to Duke. Maybe I should play in college. He's not entirely sure what to do. And this really pushed him over the edge. It says they remain difficult to draw too many conclusions from Brian's experience working out with pros that summer, except for one impression that really mattered. Bryan's own. He came away thinking that he could do it, that he could play against NBA players right away. And so when I got to this part of the book, it made me think of this.”

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  19. “Knew that Davis was leaving the school, but he replied that he didn't know. And then this is where the psychological warfare jumps out. I just wanted to see if he was going to be at the game, Bryant told him. Because if it's just you, I don't even know if it's worth me coming. He was letting me know, Carr said. I'm coming to kill you. I'm coming to rip your heart out when you get on the court with me.”

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  20. “And 17 year old kid, right? If you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats, you come to consider them your teachers. So, one of the things that makes Kobe's story unique is the fact he jumped right from high school to the NBA. In fact, when he was drafted, his parents had to sign the contract because he was 17. And so this book spends quite a bit of time talking about the fact that, hey, you have all these shoe companies like Nike and Adidas. They're playing a huge role in the basketball industry because they're making just so much money. And so Kobe's going to sign with Adidas, and they're going to put a lot of resources behind him, making him obviously extremely well-known.”

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  21. “My way. Kobe Bryant had a clear destination in mind, and if you weren't on board, he had clearly conveyed the idea that he was the sort who wouldn't hesitate to grab you by the collar and throw you right off the train. And if you think about it, that's the same idea expressed in a different way. We saw this idea before. If you've ever read Jeff Bezos' biography, The Everything Store. Somebody working with Jeff described him the same way. He said, if you're not good, Jeff will chew you up and spit you out. And if you are good, he's going to jump on your back and ride you into the ground. So let's go back to another description of Kobe. He's still in high school. We're still here. Now keep in mind, he's doing all these crazy workouts. He's dedicated to winning. And when he's not working, he's studying the greats. So it says he worked harder than any other kid that I've ever seen. This is the guy that's running the actual summer camp. And he wanted it more than anybody else. And it says, if you're breaking down tape of magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, which Kobe's doing as a 1415-60.”

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  22. “At getting to the NBA. Maybe one in a million, that's fine. I'm that one in a million. Then we skip ahead. Now they're living in Philadelphia full time. Kobe is in high school and we see this legendary work ethic is already present. That fall in high school his coach discovered that Brian had a startling work ethic. He pushed himself through a grueling self-improvement schedule that included road work, weights, and seemingly non-stop basketball. In team practices, he was determined to never lose a team drill or contest. For almost four years, he would maintain a perfect record in that regard. And then we see that he matches a fierce work ethic with a relentless learning machine-like mentality. This is his coach saying, you know, the work ethics one thing, but he also had a sponge-like mentality to be the best that he could, and to do so, he would absorb information. I always thought his brain was a sponge, the coach said. And obviously, if you've ever coached, you know that you just can't say that about all of your players. And then the coach continues to talk about the fact that his level of intensity raised the bar.”

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  23. “So during the offseason, they'd come home from Italy to Philadelphia, where they're from, and Kobe would play in the Summer League, and one of the counselors of the Summer League tries to give Kobe terrible advice, which is advice a lot of people say, and they say be realistic. So says one of the counselors was looking over the applications and noticed that under career plans, Kobe had listed NBA. So the counselor made it a point to admonish Kobe. Only one in a million make it to the NBA, the counselor said. So you have to plan on a future other than basketball. I'm going to be that one in a million, Kobe replied. He was 11. And that kind of self-belief and desire to be quote-unquote unrealistic is very common in these stories that you and I study. When I got to this part, the first thing that came to mind was actually one of my favorite quotes from Jay-Z's autobiography, which I covered back on episode 238. And he's describing, like, think about how quote-unquote unrealistic Jay-Z's life is. If you were describing”

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  24. “Manic insistence. So that's the second part Master of the Fundamentals, number one, number two, improve your weaknesses. He never seemed to stop working at the game, even at that very young age. If he wasn't playing the game, then he was watching videotape of NBA stars. That's number three, Study the Greats. And then finally number four, he would show that he had already grasped the powers of”

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  25. “A lot because he's a main character in this book as well. Jordan and Kobe are on the phone because this idea about just forget the fancy stuff, master the fundamentals at a deep, deep level is something Kobe repeated a bunch. It's in the book. It's in interviews with him. And so he calls out Michael Jordan and he's talking about the way they're teaching his daughter how to play basketball. And he thought that they were prioritizing like fancy stuff over fundamentals. So he calls up Jordan. He's like, hey, I'm trying to figure, like I'm trying to, I'm having a hard time remembering what I was learning when I was 12 on how to play basketball. But I'm pretty sure it's not all this stuff. And Jordan's response was, dude, at 12, I was playing baseball. And so the point Kobe was making in this interview is like, think about that, the greatest player to ever live hadn't even picked up a basketball yet. Your 12-year-old doesn't need all this other fancy stuff. Just focus on the fundamentals. So back to the book. It says throughout his career, if he was deficient in something, Bryant would display the work ethic to build every element of his competitive portfolio with an almost”

    2022-10-19 · Founders · #272 Kobe Bryant (The Life) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Smiles, very determined. He was always so serious about everything he did as far as sports, always so intense. He was eight years old. The rest of the kids just wanted to play, and he was like, I want to win. And so later in life, Kobe talks about the benefit of learning how to play basketball in Italy and the fact that he thought it gave him an edge. And so this part was especially great because spread out over two pages is a bunch of different ideas. And the note I left myself here is he's laying out a blueprint and there's four parts to it. Master the fundamentals, improve your weaknesses, study the grades, and concentrate. And so he says, I started playing basketball over there meeting Italy, which was great because I learned the fundamentals first. Most kids who grew up in America learn all the fancy dribbling. In Italy, they teach you true fundamentals and leave out all that other nonsense. And so I've told this story before on past episodes, but I think it's worth repeating here shortly before he died, one of the last conversations he had with Michael Jordan, and we're going to get to Jordan.”

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  27. “Old man and his father's teammates that he was going to be far better than either of them. Bryant's existence has been a singular, almost inhuman pursuit of that greatness. So basketball was a lifelong obsession with Kobe. It starts even at a very early age at four years old. His dad is taking him to NBA games because he's still playing in the NBA at this time. And he said, this is a quote from his dad. I've taken Kobe to Lakers Games and introduced him to the players. He's a huge Magic Johnson fan. And this is the first hint that his father is the anti Kobe. And really, this is just disgusting level of irresponsibility coming from a father. I think at this point he's got two daughters and I think Kobe is the youngest. And look what he does. So his father's playing for the Houston Rockets at the time. And it says in his last season he played 81 games. The one game he missed made headlines when he went bust in an all-night poker game and didn't have money for a cab to make the team bust. After that season, it became clear that absolutely no one in the NBA wanted”

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  28. “A dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else. He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him. In turn, his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict, just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport. He would not pay to have his greatness. What follows in this book is my effort to capture his Fascinating story. In many ways, a cautionary tale. Was an excerpt from the book that we talked about today, which is this giant 600 page biography that I'm holding in my hand. It's called Showboat, The Life of Kobe Bryant, and it was written by Roland Lazenby.”

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  29. “In the midst of the chaos of his third season, Bryant was a very lost, lonely, frustrated twenty year old. I just want to be the man, he told me, reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I just have to find a way. And he would. Despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time, as he closed in on the end of his career, Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in twenty seasons and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players. Though that night he said he didn't know how he would get to the top, he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there. Implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game night after night, game after game until he found”

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