[0:03]Today could be today that your career is over. Now what do you do? I said I better get to work. Rest at the end, not in the middle. And that's something I always live by. I'm not going to rest, I'm going to keep on pushing now. There are a lot of answers that I don't have, even questions that I don't have. But I'm just going to keep going. I'm just going to keep going and I'll figure these things out as you go, right? And you just continue to build that way. So I try to live by that all the time. Have a dream, sacrifice for it and never, ever rest in the middle. And I came into the NBA, man, these dudes really don't work that hard. One of the things I would do is while everybody would be in the cafeteria, you know, eating and doing all sorts of stuff, I just go back to the gym. I just go back to the gym. How can I show you that, no, I have the edge? Well, you do it through training, right? So when I get up in the morning, my daughter goes with me. 4:00 AM? 4:00 AM. My 15-year-old goes with me. She goes with him before school. It becomes a daddy-daughter thing. That's cool. Through that process, she understands the value of hard work. And so it's through those behaviors is where I find the motivation to do it. I think the definition of greatness is to inspire the people next to you. I think that's what greatness is or should be. And this is not something that's that that lives and dies with one person. It's how can you inspire a person to then in turn inspire another person and then inspires another person? And that's how you create something that I think lasts forever. It's not sit around and all it's all happy-go-lucky type of thing. As a leader, your job is to get the best out of them. Got to deal with it, face it, learn from it. It's exciting when you win. It's exciting when you lose because the process should be exactly the same. But the hardest thing is to face that stuff. But what if today is the day that you, that's it? Now what will you do?
[2:12]What can I say? Mamba out.
[2:22]My parents were great. You know, growing up, they instilled in me the importance of imagination, of curiosity. And understanding that, okay, if you want to accomplish something, I'm not just going to sit here and say, yes, you can do whatever you want. Yes, you can, but you have to also put in the work to get there, right? So they taught me that at a really early age, man. And when you grow up as a kid, thinking that the world is your oyster, all things are possible if you put in the work to do it, you grow up having that fundamental belief. Who is more influential for you? Your father or mother? Both were influential at different points. My mom was there on a daily basis. My father was really influential at a really critical time where, you know, I had a summer where I played basketball. I was like 10 or 11 years old. And here I come playing and I don't score one point the entire summer. You didn't score once? Not once. Were you in the game? I was in the game. How could you not score? Because I was terrible. Not a free throw, not a nothing, not a lucky shot, not a breakaway layup, zero points. And I remember crying about it and being upset about it. And my father's give me a hug and say, listen, whether you score zero or score 60, I'm going to love you no matter what. Wow. And that is the most important thing that you can say to a child, because from there I was like, okay, it gives me all the confidence in the world to fail. I have the security there, but to hell with that, I'm scoring 60. Let's go. Right, right, right. And from there I just went to work. I just, I stayed with it. I kept practicing, kept practicing, kept practicing. I think that's when the idea of understanding a long-term view became important because I wasn't going to catch these kids in a week. It wasn't going to catch him a year, right? So that's why I sat down and said, okay, this is going to take some thought. Right? What do I want to work on first? All right, shooting. All right. Let's knock this out. Let's focus on this half a year, six months. Do nothing but shoot. After that, all right, creating your own shot. And you focus. So you start, I started creating a menu of things. When I came back the next summer, I was a little bit better. Then 14 came around back half of 13, 14 years old. And then I was just killing everyone.
[4:42]It happened in two years and I wasn't expecting it to happen in two years, but it did, because what I had to do was work on the basics, the fundamentals, but they relied on athleticism and their natural ability. And because I stick to the fundamentals, I just caught up to them. And then my body, you know, my knees stopped hurting. I grew into my frame. And then your athleticism, once you have the fundamentals, the hard work, the mindset, and you tack on the athleticism, it's game over. Then it was game over. Wow.
[5:16]The love of the game, the challenge. Like I would watch Magic play, I'd watch Michael play. And I would see them do these unbelievable things. And I'd say, you know, can I get to that level? I don't know, but let's find out. Let's find out. And so that curiosity to see where I could push this thing led me down that path, I think. With the 13th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft, the Charlotte Hornets select Kobe Bryant from Lower Merion High School in Pennsylvania. Greatness lies ahead for this young man. Well, I learned that you have to work hard and you have to approach the game with a serious mindset. There was a stretch in '03 where Shaq was out with an injury. And Phil called me up to his office and said, okay, we need you to really turn on the afterburners. So I did and I wind up scoring, I think nine straight games, 40+ points. Nine straight games. Nine straight games. And then Shaq comes back, second to last game of that. And then Phil called me up to his office and he says, Kobe, okay, I need you to dial it back. I'm like, why? I don't understand. He says, because our goal is to win a championship. But if you continue to do this, we will lose Shaq. We'll lose him. His motivation, his excitement, what triggers him. Right. So I need you to pull back, so we can pull Shaq forward for June. And that was the big challenge is you move from, you know, being the single dominant player to understanding, okay, I have to help these other guys. How do I lift everyone else up? It's tough. It's more like you put you put yourself to the side, you put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're feeling. And then you have to make certain decisions of, okay, what buttons do I need to push for this player to get them to the next level? So it's never it's not sit around. It's all happy-go-lucky type stuff. As a leader, your job is to get the best out of them.
[7:23]Even if they may not like it at that time. He was very demanding because he expected everyone to put in the same effort as he was. And that was unrealistic. You're not behind me, you're not in front of me. You're right there. Right there parallel with me. Practice was very competitive right away. You know how Kobe is. We was jarring. We had it going sometimes. He didn't let me slip a lot. Times where I'd get ejected or about to get a technical foul or going off the deep end. He would be there to, you know, set me straight a lot, which helped me out a lot. So we get in the timeout and he's like, hey, hey, I'm open. I'm like, okay. And so we go out, same thing. He comes hey, I'm open. Okay. And he'll come again. Hey dude, you got to throw me the ball. And I said, man, f*** that. Get it off the rebound if I miss, bro.
[8:15]I don't I don't deal with people that don't commit at that level, but then act as if they do. The running joke, "he doesn't pass" and all this other crap. That's okay. You know, I'll take those five rings. I'll take five of them.
