“You guys play harder at a pickup game at UCLA, and it ain’t billion of people watching”: Kobe Bryant let his disappointment known to the NBA players for playing the All-Star games for fun

Lakers were not the only team Kobe Bryant gave his 100 percent for, the Western Conference All-Star team was the other, and he wanted every player in the league to do the same.

The All-Star weekend is the time of the season for which most of the players eagerly wait to get one of the best individual honors they can get for the grind they go through every NBA season.

But they do not particularly show much enthusiasm while playing the game that involves the most star-studded line-ups in a single day on the same basketball court. It wasn’t always the case, not until the time Kobe Bryant was in these games.

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The Black Mamba played his All-Star games like any other ball game he ever played, with authority and dominance. But the 18x All-Star was always unhappy with the other players for not playing with the same vigor and passion as him.

He let his displeasure known many a time, including on a podcast with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles of The Players’ Tribune’s Knuckleheads Podcast.

Kobe Bryant thought the All-Star game needed a revamp

Before his tragic and untimely death in a helicopter crash in January 2020, Kobe joined the pair of his former NBA colleagues and gave his honest thoughts about the state of the All-Star Game.

“I think the All-Star game in general needs a little revamping because it used to be competitive. Fans want to see the best pick-up game in the world. That’s what it is. They don’t want to see you running up and down doing all this crazy stuff, dunking, and all that. They want to see what happens when you put the best collection of basketball players on the planet, they play and go head up against each other. I mean, you guys play harder at a pickup game at UCLA, and it ain’t billion of people watching.” Kobe said.

In the 15 All-Star games he played among his 18 selections, Bryant won 10 of those for the West team. Being the second-best scorer (290 points) of all time in the All-Star games, the Mamba also averaged 2.5 steals a game, always guarding the best player in the opponent team.

Bryant had a companion who still has the same mentality as the 4x All-Star game MVP, Chris Paul.

“I always loved competing in them, I didn’t lose in many of them. Me and [Chris Paul] used to talk about it all the time. I don’t think that when me and CP played together in the All-Star game, I don’t think we ever lost a game. We used to look at each other, ‘OK let’s go. Yeah, fourth quarter, let’s go get them.’” Kobe further said on the podcast.

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CP3 rocked Team LeBron’s jersey Sunday night in his 17th season in the NBA, making it his 12th appearance in the popular game.

The All-Star game is surely revamped, which is not in East-West format anymore, but it’s still not anywhere close to the expectations where Kobe wanted it to be, if not further away.