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.
My mom would take me to restaurants, and the first thing I'd ask for would be a pen and a napkin, and I'd sketch shoes and shoes and shoes.
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.
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.'
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.
The world that I would want to get into would be acting. In the beginning, I would do stuff as myself if I had the opportunity to host events - host, like, a talk show. Something like that, I think, would be super amazing.
In Harlem, Facebook was big. Kids would make Facebook 'families,' where they would change their last name on Facebook and have the same last name as their friends. I had this girl I was talking to, and she changed her last name to West, so I changed mine to West, too. It wasn't until later that I took the 't' off.
Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.
I tell you what: I bet Jerry Jones would not trade places with a 75-year black man in Chicago. I bet Joel Klatt would not trade places with a 30-year old black guy from Chicago or Watts. I bet he wouldn't do that. You know why? It's great to know that I'm white and a male in America.
If I'm being forgiving of myself, I could say I'm somebody who was really hungry for experiences. The same thing that would make me go try to be a trail cook on a ranch was the same thing that would make me want to have sex with a couple cowboys while I was there.
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.
I go into the crowd almost everyday and I really really really despise it when people try to steal my shoes. That is a thing where they're proabably like 'oh, you can just go out and buy a new pair'. Like yeah, but those are my shoes. How would you feel if I tried to steal your shoes?
We would also go to musicals. So Singing In the Rain, On the Town, and West Side Story. Especially West Side Story because played that a lot before VCRs, so that would be something that would be a big deal if it came on, you caught it. So that really started, my family was not in show business at all but really loved that kind of thing.
I think, myself, I would be quite guilty about wearing the same thing all the time. I would find something that works and stick with it.
I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have tried in vain, every day, to not think about you, and what could have been. What should have been. I would have tried to convince myself that there's no such thing as true love, except for the love you yourself make work, even though I know better....The bottom line is I never had any business marrying anyone who wasn't you.
I can't possibly put myself in his [Tony Blair's] shoes and be inside his head but what I can say is that the security of the nation is the first duty of any government but at the same time for me going to war would always be the last resort. I would exhaust all other opportunities first.