“I stopped paying attention to Michael Jordan comparisons!”: When Kobe Bryant talked about forging his own identity whilst being compared to Mike

Kobe Bryant was the one supposed to carry the torch from Michael Jordan but at a young age, he learned to disregard the comparisons. 

The NBA has been looking for a successor to Michael Jordan’s reign since he retired. People have ceased looking for clones in recent years and now look for a similarly dominant outstanding player.

There are many excellent players in the NBA today, but most of them have never been explicitly compared to Jordan. Nonetheless, His Airness claims that just one player comes close to matching his excellence. That player, unsurprisingly, is Kobe Bryant.

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One of Kobe Bryant’s biggest ambitions in entering the NBA was to exceed his hero Michael Jordan.

The Lakers legend got as near to MJ as any other player has since MJ retired, being an absolute monster on both sides of the court.

Kobe Bryant opened up about the comparisons with Michael Jordan; says the excitement faded away eventually

One of Kobe Bryant’s biggest ambitions since entering the NBA was to exceed his hero Michael Jordan.

The Lakers legend got as near to MJ as any other player has since MJ retired, being an absolute monster on both sides of the court. The comparisons became more frequent, and Kobe was always held to Jordan’s standards.

Bryant was understandably tired of the comparisons, which put a lot of pressure on a guy to measure up to such a great talent.

RARE: 19-year old Kobe Bryant speaks about comparisons to Michael Jordan and talks trash in Italian, in this recently surfaced footage from his appearance on @MagicJohnson‘s talk show ‘THE MAGIC HOUR’ from 1998. pic.twitter.com/ZN4g3ZnTgd

— Adam Howes (@Howsito) August 8, 2021

Kobe said he appreciated the comparisons at first, but eventually, he did not pay much attention to them.

“I was putting together my own identity. But I’ll never forget how much I learnt from MJ. I knew his moves, I used them. But for the comparisons didn’t work because our situations were completely different. I came straight out of high school and played with a dominant big in Shaq. What was I, like, 17? The more you think about it, my situation was completely different than MJ’s, so the comparisons were just, you know, I stopped paying attention to them.”

Kobe went on to win several NBA accolades, becoming one of the best players to ever play the game.

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Everyone recognizes Kobe Bryant’s legendary career, with Jordan even claiming that Kobe was the only player who ever came close to matching his accomplishments.