I want to be me - and people know it's me. I don't want: 'He's trying to act like Kobe' or 'His answers are like something Kobe would've said.' Nah. If it's me, I'm going to say it.
The thing is I'm with Nike and I don't want to wear any other player's shoe. No Giannis or LeBron - I'm not going to wear those, and it narrows what you can wear. But with the Kobe's, who cares because Kobe is Kobe. You can wear his shoe because it's Kobe. They look great, the feel great and it represents something.
I had the Kobe jersey. I would do the Kobe walk. I would walk around the house doing the Kobe stare-down face. Anything you can name, I was idolizing him, trying to be like him.
If everyone had a superpower, Kobe would be the Hulk. Kobe could take on a whole team by himself and he's willing to do that. So, Kobe is like I'll go 5-1, I don't care. I'm still going to win. I put in more work than all five of you guys.
That Stash Kobe 1, that is probably my number 1 shoe I have ever worn on the court. To wear it against Kobe in his last game against the Suns it was real fun, and for him to say something to me about them it is crazy. He is signed them up for me and personalized it. It was pretty dope.
Guys like LeBron, Chris Paul, Kobe... They all speak to me. It's just insane that all these top tier guys who have been in the All-Star game for so many years actually know who I am. I mean not in a million years did I think that Kobe would speak to me.
Kids will tell me 'oh I want to be like you when I grow up,' you know. I just thought 'nah, don't be like me, be like you,' because first of all they don't really know me but second of all I understand what they're trying to say but I just let them know - be like you.
When I was, like, 4 or 5, I'd just always tell - my mom would ask me what I wanted to be when I got older. And I would just be like, 'I wanna be Kobe.' She'd be like, 'You wanna be in the NBA?' 'No, like, I wanna be Kobe.'
Even in practice, me and Kobe get into it every day. I do my best to challenge him. He's still going to be Kobe, talking trash.
I wore the number 24 in high school my freshman, sophomore year because of him. I wore Kobe Bryant basketball shoes because of Kobe Bryant. Every time I laced up my basketball shoes, I felt like I had Kobe Bryant with me. I had a little part of him - I had his jumper, his fadeaway.
I would get mad if Kobe was like, 'I'm not going to shoot that much tonight.' No, no, no, that's your gift. The people want to see you do what you're going to do.
For so much of my life, I lived feeling as if, if I spoke, if I said something, I would lose everything. I would be pushed out. No one will want me. No one will love me. No one would want to be friends with me. It took me decades to get to a space of saying, 'This is my truth. This is who I am, and I don't care if you like me or you don't like me.'
At the end of the day, the only person to have a better Kobe sneaker game than me is Kobe himself.
Me, growing up, I was a Kobe fan, Kobe fanatic, and just getting, just being able to just wear his shoes, it's my favorite shoe to play in.
I don't like it when people who are young act like they're 40. That's taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you're so mature or whatever - I don't try to act mature. Some people might say I'm mature for my age, but it's not something I'm trying to do, you know? I'm just me.
I don't want my kids to be like me, I don't want my daughter to date a guy like me. You know, for a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make 'em cushioned. I don't want them to be around people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.
I think Phil Jackson started that feud. It happened many times that after team practice he would say, 'Kobe said this about Shaq, and Shaq said that about Kobe... ' We couldn't believe how could that happen, because just the day before we saw them together, jumping on one another.