With everything most people know about Kobe Bryant, it is still a little-known fact that Bean comes from a basketball family. Kobe’s father, Joe ‘Jellybean’ Bryant, played eight seasons in the NBA before playing pro in Italy and France. He wasn’t the only one, either. Cedric Cebbalos, the 1995 NBA All-Star, also happens to be Bryant’s second cousin.
Advertisement
Ceballos played 11 years in the league for the Lakers, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Detroit Pistons and the Miami Heat. He caught up with fellow Laker alum, Byron Scott, on Fast Break as they discussed a multitude of topics, including Ceballos’ late cousin, Kobe.
Speaking fondly, Ceballos, who shares the same great-grandfather with Kobe, recalled Bryant’s refusal to quit on any challenge. Ceballos said, “I saw him miss 360 dunks on Shaq. Me and Eddie [Jones] are sitting there [laughing].“ Despite the misses, Kobe kept going.
Eddie Jones, Ceballos’ Lakers teammate, couldn’t hide his laughter but knew what it meant. “You know, Eddie, first thing Eddie does is cover up his mouth up and start laughing,” Ceballos added. Kobe’s failures weren’t humiliations; they were fuel that kept driving him to be great.
According to Ceballos, the family had already been buzzing about the younger Bryant before he hit the NBA. “When I was coming into the league, my first cousin Tony Bryant was my agent, and he was like, ‘Yo, we got a cousin that’s bad.‘” Tony knew what the league was about to witness.
“He’s coming back from overseas, and he’s in Philly and he’s doing his thing,“ Ceballos recalled his cousin saying. That “thing“ turned out to be dominating playgrounds and pro runs long before he was given a real chance to shine for the LA Lakers.
From the moment Kobe arrived, Ceballos said it was apparent something was different about him. The rookie’s daily routine made that crystal clear. “He would practice with pros … then he would leave us, go to UCLA and play,“ said Ceballos.
But it didn’t end with college kids. “He would leave UCLA, play with the college kids, his level, and go to Palisades and play with the high school kids.“
The repetition, the schedule—none of it bothered Kobe. It drove him. “He would go home and go, ‘Let me rewind this tape. Let me rewind and study, study, study,'” continued Ceballos. “So everything that Kobe deserved, he earned. It was not given to him.”
Ceballos and Scott referred to Bryant throughout the episode not as Bean or the Black Mamba, but as Showboat. While the name remains self-explanatory, Scott did explain its origin. “I gave him that nickname Showboat because he was a rookie that hurt his wrist, you know, playing at the damn Venice Beach.”
Kobe Bryant’s tenacity was not a myth—it was a memory, lived and witnessed by both Cedric Ceballos and Byron Scott.
