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.
I grew up watching Kobe Bryant.
I grew up a huge fan of Kobe.
I grew up being a Kobe fan, of course.
Huge Kobe fan growing up. My dog's name is Kobe.
I am pretty antisocial and have difficulty communicating with other human beings. I know that if I were in Philly I'd still mostly be hanging out in my apartment reading books and playing with synthesizers. That said, I grew up in Philly, went to college in Philly, lived in Philly afterwards for a while - almost every formative experience in my life has happened in Philly. Whether I like it or not, Philly is all over everything I do for the rest of my life.
I grew up with all these old jazz guys in the '70s in L.A., and they grew up idolizing Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Lester Young - all of these incredible musicians.
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.
I grew up in L.A., so I'm a huge Lakers fan and Kobe fan.
I grew up watching Kobe and all these other dudes, but I was in love with that Oklahoma City Thunder team with James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and Kevin Durant.
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.
Kobe meant a lot to me growing up.
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 grew up wearing black arm-bands when the hunger strikers died. I went on those marches. I grew up basically a Provo, though I never obviously got into any activities. I was writing 'IRA, Brits out' on walls all over where I grew up, but that was a false sense of Irishness.
I grew up in Mountain Pine, Arkansas. You get no more country than where I grew up. But I also grew up in the Napster / iTunes / Spotify/ iHeart Radio era, and so I see that everything is influenced by everything else, and that's what country music is now.
I grew up in a family that nearly lost everything, but I ended up in the United States Senate because I grew up in an America that invested in kids like me and built a real future for us.