A lot of people think that the late, great Kobe Bryant became a cold-blooded killer around the 2003-04 season when he truly assumed the role of a franchise centerpiece. However, the truth is that Kobe was the same competitor since his high school days, willing to do whatever it took to get an edge over his opposition. John Salley’s Kobe story on Byron Scott’s Fast Break podcast shows what kind of ironclad discipline even a 20-year-old Kobe had.
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By the 1999-2000 season, Kobe was an All-Star, on his way to his first championship win. During that season, Salley joined the Lakers for his last run in the league. Riding the wave of a 17-game winning streak, the Lakers were scheduled to play the Miami Heat next.
Knowing that the Miami side wasn’t in the best of form at the time, Salley felt confident enough to throw a party for his teammates at a Miami club.
A day before the game, he lured his fellow Lakers in with the promise of bringing in lots of women. Despite knowing that Kobe was notorious for avoiding such outings, he invited a young Bryant to the club. Surprisingly, Kobe accepted the invitation and showed up.
Just 20 years old at the time, Kobe was already a big star in LA. Even though he was just sitting by himself, he soon had the women that Salley brought swooning over him. The former Pistons man was impressed.
While everyone was having a great time, Kobe shocked his senior teammate by saying that he wanted to leave. “I come over and he goes, ‘I’m ready to leave.’ I said, ‘Damn, you pulled one down?’ And he’s like, ‘No, I got to train in the morning,'” Salley revealed in the podcast.
“I said, ‘Kobe, we’re in Miami, bro.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to train at six though,” he added.
For Kobe, training wasn’t just an obligation that he had to do before games. To him, it was a part of his lifestyle. This kind of discipline is what made him one of the greatest of all time and he imparted that wisdom to several others when he played with them.
Kobe Bryant inspired the Redeem Team to go to the gym early morning
For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, USA Basketball assembled arguably the best Team USA roster of all time. Kobe was handed the responsibility to lead the pack. While the team was in the Vegas training camp, all the players except Kobe went to party one night. When they returned to the hotel at the break of dawn, they were surprised to see Kobe in the lobby, on his way to the gym.
“Kobe is downstairs in the lobby with his bag and his sneakers and his gloves, his weight lifting gloves and we’re like joking, like, ‘Where the f**k you going?’ [He said], ‘I’m going downstairs.’ Like, it’s four o’clock, man. I’m going to sleep, I’ll see you at practice,” Carmelo Anthony said in The Redeem Team documentary.
When the likes of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony, among others saw the best player in the league hit the gym instead of partying, it had a positive impact on them. Soon, they were all running on Kobe’s time, sweating it out in the gym hours before the actual practice.
