There are few athletes in history who are revered as much as Kobe Bryant and more than five years after his death, it seems his stature is still growing. Listen to any basketball-related podcast and you’ll see it’s true. It’s rare for a Kobe story or two not to come up, as current and former athletes can’t help but share an anecdote or describe how the Mamba mentality changed their life.
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Kobe retired back in 2016 and he passed away less than four years later. In that time, he won an Academy Award for his short film Dear Basketball and became a mentor to many of the best young players coming up.
Though Kobe is so beloved now, that wasn’t always the case, a fact pointed out by Jeff Teague on the most recent episode of the Club 520 podcast.
“People just started liking Kobe when he retired,” Teague said.
That statement sounds blasphemous on the surface, but it’s actually true. Back in Kobe’s heyday, he was known as a no-holds-barred competitor, someone who wasn’t interested in being friends with his opponents because that would interfere with his mission of crushing them.
Kobe famously didn’t get along with Shaquille O’Neal, a feud that resulted in Shaq being traded from a team that had won three straight titles. His legal issues stemming from accusation of sexual assault also didn’t help, especially as his court dates became national news.
Kobe himself has admitted that he wasn’t interested in making friends during his playing days.
“I’ve been fortunate to play in Los Angeles, where there are a lot of people like me. Actors. Musicians. Businessmen. Obsessives. People who feel like God put them on earth to do whatever it is that they do,” he explained in a 2015 interview with GQ.
“Now, do we have time to build great relationships? Do we have time to build great friendships? No. Do we have time to socialize and to hang out aimlessly? No. Do we want to do that? No. We want to work. I enjoy working,” he had famously said.
Kobe’s complicated legacy
There are many players who continue to defend Kobe’s reputation. Kyrie Irving is one of them. On one of his livestreams last month, Kyrie spoke to Kobe’s all-around greatness, saying that people need to “Knock that s*** off” when it comes to trying to tear the Lakers legend down posthumously.
Still, there are others, even some of his teammates, who have spoken recently to how cold Kobe could be. Smush Parker won two rings playing alongside Kobe, but he told Pablo Torre Finds Out back in December of 2023 that Kobe wouldn’t even speak to him.
“He looked at me and said, ‘You can’t talk to me. You need more accolades under your belt.’ He was dead serious,” Parker said.
Kobe’s legacy is complicated, and it’s constantly being relitigated since he’s still such an ever-present figure despite no longer being with us. It’s not disrespecting his legacy to speak some hard truths as Teague and Parker did, it’s giving a full account of who the man was, and it’s nothing that Kobe hasn’t admitted himself.
Kobe embraced being a mentor after his playing career was done, but while he was still lacing them up, friendliness wasn’t at the top of his priority list. That’s part of who he was, and part of how he should be remembered.
