What We Learned From Kobe Bryant's Genius Talk
Black Mamba drops gems at the BET Experience.
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Black Mamba Drops Gems - Kobe Bryant has lived a few basketball lives. The five-time NBA champion is entering his 20th (and possibly last) year in the league. Through his hall of fame career, Bryant has learned a lot about basketball and just life, period. During his Genius Talks sitdown with ESPN's Jemele Hill, as part of the BET Experience 2015, Bryant dropped plenty words of wisdom about hoops, family and seemingly everything in between. Before you see The Best of Genius Talks, airing on BET Friday, July 3 at 3:30 p.m. ET, here are some of the standout quotables from the Black Mamba.(Photo: Jason Kempin/BET/Getty Images for BET)
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His Bond With Former Teammates - "Teammates I've had in the past...Lamar [Odom], who I still stay in contact with...D. Fish, Ronny Turiaf, Shannon Brown...all our guys. We still talk to this day. To them, if you ask them, they'll say, 'No, he's not an a**hole.'"(Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)
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Kobe on Who His Daughters Take After - "Natalia takes after Vanessa. Gianna takes more after me; a lot of energy. They're both extremely competitive. They're very smart, they read a lot, they study a lot. They're great kids. The younger one is more like me; the older one is more like V."(Photo: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
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What He Learned From Shaquille O'Neal - "Don't be an a**hole. I've never been the most patient person in the world and one of my pet peeves is laziness or people who make excuses. I can't stand that. In working with Shaq, the guy is a freak of nature and he's mean when he plays, which I relate to. But there's other parts that I didn't relate to. There's certain things that are strengths of his. I was able to look in the mirror and say, 'OK, maybe you are being an a**hole.' You have to self-assess. Once I learned that, I think we were able to go to a higher level as a team."
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On Mentoring Lakers Rookie D'Angelo Russell - "I think the biggest thing for players now is to ask why? I think that's the biggest thing. I think players nowadays have become conditioned to do X, Y and Z. You have coaches on the high school level, college and then professional telling you do this, do that, as opposed to teaching players what to ask.(Photo: Elsa/Getty Images)
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Early Career Failures and Criticism - "Honestly, I never paid attention to it. It wasn't until years later that I realized that people thought I sucked. When I was going through it, I was so focused on trying to be one of the greatest that I literally did not hear anything that anybody else was saying."(Photo: Steve Grayson/WireImage)
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Love to Win or Hate to Lose? - "I'm neither. I play to figure things out. I play to learn something. If you play with a fear of failure or you play with a will to win and it supersedes your fear of failure, I think it's a weakness either way."(Photo: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
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Friends and Basketball - "Friends can come and go, but banners hang forever."(Photo: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
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Toughest Part of Returning From Injury - "Having to do it again. It felt like I just climbed Mount Everest and now they put me at the bottom of the mountain. You're looking up at the mountain and you have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to do this again?'" (Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
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Worst Thing Ever Said to a Teammate - "There's certain players I made cry. If I make you cry by saying something sarcastic, I really don't want to play with you in the playoffs."(Photo: Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images)
