In many ways, Kobe Bryant was not like other NBA players. Check that, in many ways, he wasn’t like other humans, period. Kobe had a drive to succeed and a hunger for knowledge, whether it be on the basketball court or off of it, and that drive resulted in five rings and a legendary playing career.
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Few players have left a legacy like Kobe did with the Mamba mentality, his own personal ethos that transcended basketball and remains strong today, almost six years after his tragic passing.
On Byron Scott’s Fast Break, longtime Lakers trainer Gary Vitti told some stories of Kobe that prove what a uniquely driven individual he was. Kobe was willing to go farther than anyone else to be the best, and he proved that time and again to everyone around him.
Vitti has treated everyone from Kareem and Magic to Kobe and Shaq. Maybe that’s why he wasn’t impressed with Kobe’s talent. Lots of NBA players are talented, he argued, and there are some that could run faster and jump higher than Kobe, but most of them didn’t experience anywhere near the same level of success, for a simple reason.
“What was there about him?” Vitti asked. “Let’s start with work ethic, off the chart. Lot of guys work hard, and Kobe worked as hard or harder than anybody. But he was also different in the sense that a lot of guys can work hard, not everybody works smart. Kobe was an extremely intelligent guy. Everything about him was calculated, almost choreographed.”
Vitti spoke about how Kobe knew other teams’ offenses better than their own players did, and for anyone who has heard a Kobe story before, they know that isn’t an exaggeration.
Kobe would also push himself beyond where almost anyone was willing to go. Remember that this is a guy who tore his Achilles and stayed on to sink two free throws.
“Tougher than anybody, literally tougher than anybody I’ve ever known,” Vitti said. “Little known fact, he told me that he got waterboarded, because he wanted to see what the big deal was. He was hanging out with some Navy SEALs, and he got waterboarded … They put a towel over you, they lay you down, they tie you down, then they pour water on you like you’re drowning. He let them do that to him. Who does that?!”
Navy SEALs are known for being the most highly trained people on the planet. They’re deployed into the most extreme, sensitive situations and expected to do the impossible, so it’s not hard to see why Kobe would have been drawn to that. Another one of his legendary contemporaries, Tiger Woods, also often trained with Navy SEALs.
This story would sound ridiculous if it were anyone other than Kobe who subjected himself to an actual war crime, just to prove his toughness. Knowing it’s Kobe, though, it makes perfect sense.
To hammer his point home, Vitti told another story of how Kobe saw the horror movie Saw, and his big takeaway was, “I could do it, I know I could do it.” What exactly could he do? Remove a key that had been implanted behind his eyeball in order to escape a death trap, an impossible task that one of the victims of the movie had been tasked with.
Most people leave Saw and say, “Damn, that was one messed up movie.” Kobe’s need to constantly prove himself elicited a very different reaction. We often put athletes on a pedestal for being able to do things that the rest of us can’t, but with Kobe, it’s completely justified. He was a one of one.
