Kobe Bryant is well-known as one of the NBA’s hardest workers, but one thing that is often ignored is how the Mamba always looked for mentors in the basketball community to help him improve, till the very end of his career. We all know Kobe used to look to Michael Jordan for help. But Lakers legend James Worthy revealed that Kobe sought help from him as well, which stunned him at the time.
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In his late 30s, Bryant was trying to find ways to deceive defenders with some clever moves because he was no longer quick enough to beat them with pace. On Byron Scott’s Fast Break podcast, Worthy shared how Kobe was trying to learn a new move from him.
“Kobe wasn’t practicing a lot, but I got a call from Gary Vitti, and he said ‘Kobe wants to meet with you in the gym at 9:30’… he was coming off injuries and stuff, but he was playing… so we came in the gym, he had lost some mobility, but he was still seeking knowledge, man. This was his 19th year!”
At age 36 and coming off an Achilles tear, Bryant’s all-world athleticism had noticeably declined, forcing the Hall-of-Famer to improvise. Bryant wanted to master his low-post play and footwork to make up for his waning verticality.
“He couldn’t out-quick guys anymore, so he was trying to make it easy, and I was like, ‘Motherf***er I done seen you do everything that I’ve done and everything that everyone else [has done], what do you want?’ He was just seeking it, man,” Worthy added.
The move that he wanted to learn was a quick pump fake and drop-step at the same time that Kobe saw when his father used to play in Italy. Worthy recalled advising him to be composed and try and stroll to his spot without rushing in to shoot. But he was surely taken aback by the Mamba’s dedication to get better.
Bryant’s elevated work ethic proved to be too much for Carmelo Anthony
James Worthy is far from the first NBA legend to come face-to-face with Bryant’s incredible work ethic. Carmelo Anthony, a future Hall-of-Famer in his own right, shared how he once refused an early-morning workout with Kobe while they were with the 2008 USA Olympic Team.
On his recent appearance on Ball Magnets, Melo said,
“You look at the USA Team documentary I said ‘I’m not used to working out at 5:30 in the morning’. Like that wasn’t me… I’m not relentless like that… I don’t want to challenge myself that hard, like I’m cool.”
Bryant realized that most of his Olympic teammates would follow a two workout per-day regimen. In order to gain a leg up on the competition, Kobe would manage to add a third workout to his daily routine, one that he followed throughout his lengthy career and had him training by 4 in the morning.
Bryant proved that hard work could take a gifted athlete to extraordinary places and showed that even as one ages, the work doesn’t stop if the passion remains.
