Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are two of the most famously competitive athletes the world has ever seen. Each one was legendary for taking any insult, real or not, and using it as fuel to destroy whoever was opposite them on the hardwood. It’s that same competitive fire that led the two Hall-of-Famers to have such a deep mutual respect for one another.
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Most basketball fans know that Kobe modeled much of his game after Michael, from his mannerisms on the court to his eerily similar turnaround jumper. For his part, Jordan took Kobe under his wing and mentored him, becoming like a big brother to the Lakers legend.
Magic Johnson, another iconic Laker, once recalled how MJ continued the grand NBA tradition of passing the torch to the best player of the next generation when he and Kobe battled in the 1998 All-Star Game.
“You could see the beginning of this special relationship that was going to take place and start forming then,” Johnson told Arash Markazi in a 2020 interview for the Los Angeles Times.
“Kobe respected guys but it was different [with Jordan]. He idolized Michael in a way that was different from anybody else,” Johnson continued. “It was like, ‘Man, I’m trying to be like you but I also want to show you what I got in this All-Star game too.’”
That game was Kobe’s first All-Star appearance, and Jordan’s last as a member of the Bulls, which made it even more symbolic. It also made Magic recall how he and Larry Bird had symbolically passed the torch 6 years earlier to Jordan at the 1992 Olympics, when all three were members of the Dream Team.
“Some things you never forget and that was a moment I’ll never forget — the torch being passed,” Magic said.
Michael Jordan taught Kobe Bryant long before the two ever met
Though their NBA careers did overlap, unbeknownst to Michael, Kobe was using him as inspiration from before he was even a teenager. In an essay on The Players’ Tribune, Kobe once wrote about how, as a 12-year-old, he failed to score during an entire summer in Philadelphia’s Sonny Hill Future League and felt like he was putting his proud basketball family “to shame.”
Rather than let it get him down, Kobe thought of how his idol had once responded to similarly disappointing circumstances. “I learned that [Michael Jordan] had been cut from his high school team as a freshman; I learned he knew what it felt like to be embarrassed, to feel like a failure,” Bryant said.
That inspired Kobe, who continued, “But he used those emotions to fuel him, make him stronger, he didn’t quit. So I decided to take on my challenge the same way he did.”
Basketball fans around the world know what happened next, as Kobe followed in his idol’s footsteps to become one of the best players of his or any era. The relationship he developed with Jordan persisted and grew for the rest of his life until the day just over five years ago when he was tragically killed in a helicopter accident.
Jordan spoke at Kobe’s memorial service, which perfectly illuminated how special the bond was between the two icons. “When Kobe Bryant died, a piece of me died,” he said in the ultimate show of respect.
