It is no secret that Kobe Bryant was a loner and his obsession with basketball took precedence over anything else. While chasing the ghost of Michael Jordan, Bryant didn’t leave any stone unturned to study the game and fine-tune his arsenal. Those who got in the vicinity were overwhelmed by his love for the game. This is why when a young Baron Davis visited Mamba’s home, his head started spinning after witnessing the hundreds of basketball tapes in his room. He couldn’t fathom how a youngster like him was so imbibed in the game, that he would only speak, breathe, and ooze basketball.
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Instead of spending time with his friends, the 5x champion preferred observing NBA tapes. Davis concluded that the Lakers legend was indeed a quirky personality, and he had never seen anyone like him. On the Games With Names podcast, the 2x All-Star narrated,
“So we go over Kobe’s house, tour the house, hangin’ out, Like ‘Yo this is my room’ as big as this and like on the side of the wall is just tapes, like, DVD tapes. I’m like ‘Damn, bro what’s all this? Like you ever wanna hang out? Go out? Go to the movies? Get out?’ He’s like, ‘Nah, nah’ I was like ‘What you be doing?’ He was like, ‘Man I’m sitting watching tapes’.”
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Baron Davis couldn’t wrap his head around the extent of Bryant’s preoccupation with hoops. Here is a young man who can have all the fun in the world after grinding it out on the court, but he is glued to the screen watching hundreds of basketball tapes. But this is exactly what set him apart from his peers.
For Kobe Bryant, chasing Michael Jordan was the ultimate goal
Davis’ story is one among many proving Kobe Bryant’s obsession with basketball knew no bounds. He was a student of the game and wanted to improve in every sphere possible. In Jeff Pearlman’s Three-Ring Circus book, Bryant’s former teammate Nick Van Exel recalled how a young Mamba would borrow VHS tapes and religiously absorbed what he saw from Air Jordan.
He wanted to live up to the Michael Jordan comparison at any cost. So much so that he tried to emulate MJ’s persona to the best of his abilities. The 2x scoring champion knew that merely replicating Jordan’s skill level wasn’t enough, he needed to adopt his mindset too. The pressure of matching his peerless idol needed something extraordinary and the Black Mamba was a master at the art of achieving the miraculous.
With each year, his passion to catch up to Jordan became even more fervent, and he knew that without the championships, he would never be remembered in the same breath as the Bulls legend. As a result, the two-way maestro ended up with five titles and two Finals MVPs, proving that he is the closest thing to the 6x Finals MVP.
