NBYAY!

gotemcoach:

KOBE BRYANT and the 40-MILE BIKE RIDE

Interesting tidbit from an article on the Clippers’ Blake Griffin, by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne:

Blake Griffin needs to know if the story is true. Ever since he first heard it last July, he’s been obsessed with it.

“The first night we all got into Las Vegas last summer for the USA Basketball camp, I heard Kobe went on some 40-mile bike ride at night through the desert,” Griffin says. “Forty miles? At night?  You think it’s true?”

Before I can answer, Griffin continues:

“When I found out about that bike ride, I was so tempted to ask him if I could go next time.”

This is my favorite part about Kobe: you assume this story is true.  Forty miles in the desert?  You don’t even question it.

…in this moment, all Griffin wants to talk about is whether or not Kobe Bryant really got on a bike and rode 40 miles through the desert last July.

“I love that stuff,” Griffin says. “I love all those stories.”

The story Griffin heard turns out to be true. And it goes something like this: Bryant told his longtime trainer, Tim Grover, that he wanted to add in bike training to his summer conditioning. Grover researched a trail in Las Vegas, rented three bikes — one for Bryant, one for himself and one for Bryant’s security guard — and on the night before the first day of practice, they each put on headlamps and headed out to the trail and rode.

“We finished up around 2 a.m.” Grover said. “And we were back in the gym working out by 7:30 in the morning.”

And that’s just it.  To Blake Griffin, and most of the NBA, these are just stories.

To Kobe Bryant, that’s a Tuesday night.

#GotEmCoach

Who wore it better? 

gotemcoach:

#BROTHERS

The Secret History of Kobe Bryant’s Rap Career by Thomas Golianopoulos 

For three weeks during the summer of 1998, Kobe Bryant lived in the New Jersey mansion of hip-hop record executive Steve Stoute. Bryant was there to try on the role of rap star, but since he was also training to be the next Michael Jordan, basketball consumed most of his time. Every morning, he’d drive to nearby Ramapo College and shoot 2,000 jump shots. Sometimes, Stoute would shuttle in streetball players from New York to help Bryant brush up on his defense. By sundown every day, though, he was tasked with absorbing “the lifestyle,” a kind of initiation into the late-’90s world of rap royalty.

That was the idea, anyway.

The Big Slapstick: Shaquille O’Neal wields his doctorate before an audience of humor scholars - by Joel Warner, illus. Aaron Dana

To hear O’Neal tell it now, such shenanigans were a conscious decision, a way to engage and motivate his teammates. As an example, he recalls his famously tense relationship with Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, perhaps the last thing you’d expect O’Neal to dredge up from his past. “Kobe was the type of guy, he was like a student you know is bright but he is not applying himself,” he says, assuming a professorial tone. “So you have to do something that will get him to apply himself, like give him an A-minus, which pisses him off, so now he comes back and ARGH” — O’Neal lunges forward on the couch, looking like a monster-movie villain — “and he gives you something so much more. So what I was doing as a leader was always doing things to poke Kobe. Because I knew it was going to rev Kobe up. A lot of people didn’t understand I was doing that. [Lakers coach Phil Jackson] understood that, and that’s why he never butted in.”

(via bobbybernethy)

And another from Nole’s twitter:

gotemcoach:

THE OSCAR ROBERTSONS: The award for biggest disappointment goes to…L.A. Misérables 

They all hate each other.  Life sucks.  When does this end?

[poster reference]

ballershots:

Fuck yes, Kobe Bryant.