Kobe Bryant’s lore is extensive. Every day, new stories about what he used to do in the NBA keep coming out, and today, it’s Corey Maggette’s turn to entertain us. While on the Basement Talk podcast, he revealed a story that would leave even the most hardcore Kobe fans scratching their heads: a time when he called Maggette and asked him if he wanted to go to Six Flags.
Advertisement
According to the former Clippers forward, Kobe was a huge amusement park fan, and he called him once to ask if he wanted to go. When Maggette answered in the affirmative, Bryant said the most Bryant thing ever: “I’mma race you there, I’mma race you to Six Flags.”
Maggette, expecting a real race, said to his hosts, “Alright! So here I go, in the car, I’m flying to get to Six Flags. I get a message from Kob, ‘Oh man, I had some car trouble, but I’mma still beat you there.'” A very typical Kobe thing to say, but Maggette wasn’t going to let him off easy. He arrived at the park, and somehow, Kobe wasn’t there.
People then informed him that Kobe was running late, due to some car trouble. What happened next, however, left Maggette shaken. As he was standing there, waiting for Kobe, he heard a helicopter descending right in the middle of the park, and who else walked out of it but Bryant.
“All of a sudden, in the middle of the park, this dude, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on, man. It’s a damn helicopter that lands in the middle of the park!” he said. “Wind blowing, everything, it’s Kob, he steps out of there. They about to shut down the park for Kob! They basically kicked everyone out for him, it’s about 2000 people!”
And that wasn’t even the end of the story. Magette revealed that the fans in the park started cheering for Kobe, and one of them even shouted that he and Derek Fisher were the best. Maggette looked around in confusion, as he hadn’t seen Fisher get off the chopper. It took him a while, but eventually, realization dawned upon him: Fisher was not there, but fans assumed Maggette was Fisher.
Now Kobe wouldn’t normally be this close with a player on a rival team, but the two shared the same agent, Rob Pelinka. They also lived pretty close to each other in Newport Beach, so naturally, a friendship formed between them.
But Kobe never harbored any doubts over the rivalry between the Lakers and the Clippers, who Maggette played for at the time. He organized a workout for both of them once, and in true Kobe fashion, scheduled it at 6 in the morning. Maggette, who thought he’d beat Bryant to the location, arrived at 5:30.
The truth would soon hit him, though, as when Kobe and his trainer pulled up, he learned that the two had been working since 3:30, and that the workout scheduled with the forward was an extra one, set up solely because Bryant wanted to work with him.
“Kobe pulled up in his Range Rover. He gets out of the car with his trainer. I was like, ‘Hey, I beat you here.’ He laughed and walked right in,” he recalled. “His trainer behind him said, ‘Corey, do you know that we started at 330 in the morning? We were on the track first. We shot. Kobe actually came here for you, to do an extra workout with you. So just so you know, you didn’t beat him here.”
Even though Maggette is revered for his own intense work ethic, he realized that day that nobody could outwork Kobe Bryant.
