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

Cliff’s Edge by Lee Jenkins in SI is an amazing profile. The whole thing is worth reading. Just a couple of quotes: 

[Chris Paul] became class president in 10th, 11th and 12th grades at West Forsyth High in Clemmons, N.C. He chose the theme for the prom, Midnight in the Rose Garden. He spoke at commencement. And he agreed, like every other senior class president, to organize the 10-year reunion with his fellow council members, no matter where life took him. “I had no idea I’d be in the NBA,” the 27-year-old Paul says. He knew only that he was destined to lead.

And:

If the Clippers are a sorority, as they sometimes seem to be, Paul is both rush chair and pledge trainer. While he’s invariably giving—no one donates more courts to the Ninth Ward in New Orleans or invites more underprivileged teens to Staples Center—he can be raw and ruthless. “He’s a pit bull,” says Green, “with a little man’s complex.” When Paul played Pop Warner, he once displaced a boy’s Adam’s apple trying to recover an onside kick, and the game had to be stopped for 30 minutes while an ambulance was summoned. When Paul was briefly called up to the West Forsyth varsity as a 5-foot freshman for the Frank Spencer Holiday Classic, a 6’3” guard immediately tried to pressure him, and he reflexively swung the ball at the giant’s chin. Even conversations with C.J., who told his brother he had no chance at a major-college scholarship, turned into brawls. “I’d be trying not to hurt him and he’d be trying to kill me,” C.J. says. “He’d bite.” Paul’s shoe line with Nike includes a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde edition, to match his split personality. “He becomes a demon,” says Odom. “A Tasmanian devil.”

(Photo from CP’s facebook)

maidiemae:

Cooking with Matt Barnes .. coming soon. (:

gotemcoach:

Paul through Bosh.