“Not One of Us”: Denying ‘Soft’ Allegations, Kobe Bryant Revealed How He Embraced Himself After Being Shunned by Fellow NBA Players

Kobe Bryant is remembered as one of the most charismatic and sincere basketball players to ever grace the NBA. But many may forget that there was a stretch during the 1990s when the biggest knock on his personality was his insincerity. As we look back on an interview he did from 2015, Kobe was once described differently during his youth.

It’s hard when you grow up outside of the US and move there late during your teenage years. This is exactly how Kobe felt when he moved to the States as a 13-year-old. Growing up in Italy, he said it was difficult to get people around him to accept him. 

“It wasn’t that people thought I was soft,” Kobe said. “It was more of a street credibility thing.”

Kobe understood that he had to be himself, and he took that idea to the extreme. In High School at Lower Merion, he would end up adopting a “vanilla” personality. Kobe was often described as “Grant Hill trying to impersonate Allen Iverson”. He tried to model himself after Julius Erving.

“’He grew up in Italy. He’s not one of us.’ But what I came to understand, coming out of Colorado, is that I had to be me, in the place where I was at that moment,” Kobe revealed.

The Hall of Famer never doubted himself, and it showed. Kobe’s Mamba Mentality played a massive role in helping him overcome doubt and turning him into one of the greatest basketball players of all time. 

Kobe Bryant never understood self-doubt

Later on in his career, Kobe said that doubting yourself is pointless. In an interview from 2016, he was asked if he ever doubted himself internally. Here’s what he had to say.

“Doubt is such a strange thing,” Kobe pointed out. “There will be times that you succeed and times that you fail. So, wasting your time doubting whether or not you’ll be successful is pointless. It is. You just put one foot in front of the other, you control what you can control, and then you see what the outcome is.”

Maybe that’s easier said than done, but that’s what made Kobe great. He expected himself to be able to handle pressure because he knew that success and failure are both a part of life. At the end of the day, though, Kobe acknowledged that people experience self-doubt, emphasizing that you couldn’t let it paralyze you.

It’s great advice that we can all learn from. Doubt is a strange thing, but like Kobe says, you can’t let it get to you too much. One thing is for sure: the Black Mamba was the opposite of soft, and never doubted his ability to take and make the game-winning shot.