Kobe Bryant
speaker
640 appearances
14 recordings
5 series
first heard Jan 2024
last heard 8 Jul
Kobe Bryant’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 4.
Appearances
And they're kicking our butt again. Right. So I sit around. I just started laughing. I started laughing and then I remember Derrick Fisher looked at me like, and Lamar looked at me and goes, what is funny? I said, dude, they beat the crap out of us. They just beat the crap out. I said, I'm missing the part where that's funny.
I said, man, listen, if you start this season and they say, you know, all you have to do is win two games at home and you're NBA champ, would you take that? Yeah. Right. That's all we got to do. Yeah. Go home, win two. We're NBA champions. All we got to do is win two games in a row. That's it. We'll take care of the first game. And I promise you, they're not winning game seven on our home floor.
It's not happening. So we all just laughed about it. And then we went out and we figured it out. But that game seven was we're down 15 points in the fourth quarter. Right. And that's when you have to collectively look at each other and say, you know, the spirit of your team must be good. because at that moment is when teams fracture.
If the energy amongst each other isn't there, that trust isn't there, you're done. And we were able to collectively dig deep together and say, all right, we're gonna figure this thing out. And I wasn't playing well and I wasn't shooting the ball well at all. And so my teammates picked you up and, They delivered. Yes.
I think it's the fear of starting anew. And that was certainly present for me as well. Really? Yeah. Like an identity, you mean? Well, it's starting from scratch, right? Because when you play for 20 years, I played for 20 years, you reach a certain level. You're like, okay, wait a minute. I have to start again at the base of a mountain. and try to climb the top of this mountain.
First of all, what mountain am I climbing? I don't even know like what the am I going to be doing? It's very scary. It's very scary. Even for you? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing that helped me actually was hurting my Achilles because that forced me to sit there and say, okay, the day could be today that your career is over.
Now what do you do? You have these ideas about doing something with your life after basketball. But what if today is the day that you, that's it, now what do you do? So I had all this time sitting there with my Achilles injury and contemplating and thinking, and I said, I better get to work.
I struggle with it at first because the first question I asked, which is the wrong question, is what's the biggest industry I can get into?
Yes, money thinking, saying, okay, athletes are saying you can't make more revenue when you retire. This is your source of your income is here. I said, okay, that's a challenge. What can I do?
I did, I did. And so I started, I went for a ride and I said, okay, stop thinking of it that way. You're thinking of it the wrong way. Why'd you start playing basketball? Because I loved it. All right, what do you love to do? Oh, I love to tell stories. All right, let's do that. And then that's where it started for me.
And then on top of that, it became things like we started learning more about the financial industry and about players going broke once they retire and saying, okay, how can I... How can I minimize the chances of that happening? What are things that I can do to invest my money smartly? Also help control some of that outcome to a certain extent. And that's what I called Mike Rapoli.
Mike Rapoli was an entrepreneur who built Vitamin Water, Pirate's Boot and some other companies and started learning from them.
uh over your life that's been a constant theme that you go back to is there something you heard as a kid that you that really resonates with you or a book or a movie that just feels like this is me yeah that's funny um movies there are plenty but there's a quote from one of my english teachers at lord marion named uh mr fisk he had a great quote that said rest at the end not in the middle i'm not gonna rest i'm gonna keep on pushing now there are a lot of answers
that i don't have or 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 rest at the end rest at the end what's the question that eats you alive the most that you haven't answered yet the question that eats me alive that i haven't answered yet because you're still looking for the answer i'm still looking for the answer uh how to tell a good story
I don't think anybody has that answer. When I sat down to write Dear Basketball, I was like, okay, what do I wanna say? And you have certain acts and how you can structure certain things, right? The ebbs and flows of story, certain formulas that have been there since the beginning of time. But it's such an exact.
Right. And so that one question is really interesting. Why do you want to tell a great story? I think stories is what moves the world. Whether it's an inspirational story, it's an informational one. Nothing in this world moves without story.
My name is Kobe Bryant.
I'm 17 years old.
Fridays and Saturdays, I would go in my rec room with my basketball and basically dribble myself to sleep.
I think that that was the best thing that could have ever happened to me, because during those lonely hours in the rec room, I discovered the hunger, the motivation, and the desire to be the best possible basketball player that I could be.
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