Top 219 Kobe Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

When you played Kobe, it was something different. When you went to L.A., you made sure your shoes were tied extra tight. You made sure you got sleep, you made sure you ate better. He just made you better.

He reminds me of Michael Jordan. "You look and they have similar games where they want to lead their team to victory, no matter if they have to shoot the ball every time or if they have to rebound or pass, they're going to find a way to win." I've always said that Kobe Bryant is the best scorer in our game today and he's definitely proving himself.

Would I have been a great basketball player? No. But I think I would've been a good basketball player, one of those grinders getting eight to 10 rebounds. I would've been like Kobe and been in the gym five to seven hours a day and never missed a 10-foot jump shot. I would've been a great role player for a team.

I don't think Kobe is the best player. I'm the best player.

Millions of guys play millions of basketball games every day of the week at the playground or the YMCA. But LeBron James gets $20 million a year because he can jam on all of those guys. We're always going to want to see LeBron and Kobe go at it.

Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.

Shogo looked at Shuya and Noriko. "The winner's forced to transfer to another school where he or she is ordered not to mention the game and is instructed instead to lead a normal life. That's all." Shuya felt his chest well up inside and his face froze. He stared at Shogo and realized that Noriko was holding her breath. Shogo said, "I was a student in Third Year Class C, Second District, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture." He added, "I survived the Program held in Hyogo Prefecture last year.

As a player, you model yourself after other players. Kobe takes the same approach as Michael Jordan. But I follow someone like Magic Johnson; he showed emotion, he smiled and jumped around, he was happy for his teammates. There needs to be more players like that.

I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It's a kind of fuel; it burns and it warms you. My memory is like a chest: There are so many drawers in that chest, and when I want to be a fifteen-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe. I can smell the air, and I can touch the ground, and I can see the green of the trees. That's why I want to write a book.

I had orders from the great Bill Russell. Me and him were talking in Seattle the other day, and he was telling me how rivalries should be. I asked him if he ever disliked anybody he played against, and he told me, 'No, never,' and he told me that I should shake Kobe Bryant's hand and let bygones be bygones and bury the hatchet.

For me it's just amazing that I grew up watching Tim Duncan and KG and Kobe and Paul Pierce, Allen Iverson and all those guys and now it's like, 'Man, I can't believe they actually got old.' It's like they actually walked away. It's crazy to think about, but the game has to keep moving.

Somebody asked me about this the other day. A young Shaq and a young Penny, the young Shaq's going to take over. A medium Shaq and a young Kobe, the medium Shaq is going to take over. Now you've got an older Shaq and a young Dwyane; you step aside, you let him do his thing and you just do what's asked of you.

Michael, to me, he was an assassin. He was one of those guys that prepared himself extremely well and was relentless in his attacking. And there are a few guys who have that mentality. I think Kobe Bryant has that type of mentality, and LeBron has that type of mentality.

Kobe Bryant was the reason I started playing basketball - always was and will be my favorite player of all time. I love the way he could get his shot off, his footwork down in the post, just his determination to be the best player.

Whenever I hear people crying about Kobe yelling at people in practice or wondering whether or not LeBron is best friends with his teammates, I just roll my eyes. You know how many off-court conversations I had with the Zen-Master Phil Jackson in my entire time with the Lakers? One.

Elgin's game was an incredible performance, also. I don't think there's any comparison. Elgin did it without three-point lines. His game was attacking the hoop and hitting jumpers inside 20 feet. Kobe's range is unreal, and he does it his way.

Kobe taught people how to work hard, he taught you how to work hard. He gave you the blueprint of what you should do to be a successful basketball player, and work hard.

Making it to the league, that was my dream. But my mom saw to it that we watched our share of the WNBA too. Greatness is greatness, right?? And as much as I learned about that from seeing Kobe win his rings... I also learned about it from seeing Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie win theirs.

If you look at the history of the NBA, guys that came out of high school are the guys that held the NBA together. You look a Kobe Bryant, you look at a LeBron, these are household names.

I think there's a lot of different ways to win. You've seen teams that win championships with a super-duper star like Kobe Bryant. Those championship teams with Michael Jordan certainly had a great, great player.

My whole thing is if you want to do it, then do it. Kobe told me this, but he said, 'You don't wanna lay all your eggs in one basket, but you wanna lay all your eggs in one basket.' If you wanna do something and be great at it, that's what you're going to have to specialize in. Just take it and run.

Do you know how many teams have won three straight titles over the last 40 years? Two. Michael Jordan's Bulls twice in the 1990s and Kobe and Shaq's Lakers from 2000-02. LeBron would have joined that list had Miami won that third straight title.

My friends, they all say that I'm turning Hollywood. Big-time. And I want to be that. I want to be a guy who's bigger than what they say. You look at Kobe. Michael Jordan. Somebody like Michael Jackson. Those guys are bigger than life. I strive to be that.

NBA gets to see these players develop more..Did Lebron need another year, Did Kobe need another year

Five years before my accident in 2003, you saw Kobe and Shaq pull up to games on bikes. Michael Jordan owned a racing team. So it wasn't that weird that I was on a motorcycle, even though it was against team rules. You've got to live your life, you know? But yeah, I made a dumb choice.

If you've got a teammate around you, you know sometimes they're going to score, sometimes you're going to pass the ball or you won't win games - unless you're Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. And even then, they need a good team around them.

I think people fail to realize that teams and organizations have been stacking teams since way back in the day. The Lakers had the Showtime era. Boston had six hall of famers on one team. You had Detroit, the New York Knicks, and now the Miami Heat. They were stacking their teams back then, it just fell off over the years and now it picked back up. Boston did it first, then LA. I was fortunate enough to play against them when they had Shaq, Kobe, Rick Fox, Gary Payton, Karl Malone... that's five hall of famers on one team! So you can't get mad at Miami for doing what they did.

He's just intelligent-sort of a nerd, actually. He's the only brother I know who made a 1420 on the SAT. I don't think Chris Dudley did that, and Mr. Smarty Pants went to Yale. Kobe doesn't hang out. He doesn't go to the clubs. He doesn't ride around. He doesn't put rims on his car. He's just him. He's a sophisticated kid. Damn mature for his age.

Kobe Bryant demands his teammates to be the best every night, and he's not afraid to challenge them. He's not afraid to challenge them publicly, he's not afraid to challenge them in the locker room, and that's what you need from a leader.

Honestly, I don't listen to nobody else's music but my own. It's kind of like sports to me. You don't see Kobe Bryant at a LeBron James game - he just works on his own game. And that's what I do. I only listen to me, so I can criticize and analyze and all those things.

The best quality about Kobe Bryant? You want me to be honest? I don't know. I'll tell you why. I open my arms to everybody. But he never stepped forward for the embrace. So I never really got to know him. I don't know anything about him, and it's kinda sad.

For me, there's no difference between what's temporary and what's definitive. I built the church in Kobe, which was supposed to be temporary, and people liked it so much that there's a version of it still there today - unlike some concrete buildings that were just built for money and that can be destroyed from one day to the next. Concrete can be very fragile during earthquakes.

And you want to know why track and field is dying in this country? Kids today can watch Kobe Bryant go end-to-end and Randy Moss run a down-and-out and Ichiro Suzuki go from first to third and they will see it start to finish, in real time, the outcome happening before their eyes. But the men's 400 relay finals at the world championships? On your mark, get set . . . we'll show it to you in four hours on another network.

Kobe was my favorite player from just the way he went about competition. He was so skilled, but his mindset and his approach were really what I took away from him more than anything. How tactical, passionate and detailed he is about the game - he really loved the game.

It was great to be in the gym with Kobe. He's so particular about the game and... why and how things work. That's one thing I kind of love about him. If you ask him something, he's going to tell you A, B, C, and D, and how that affects each play.

The Laker brand and name itself is fantastic. When you have a guy like Kobe Bryant in that brand also, it takes it out of this world. I think the fact that everybody sees the work ethic this guy has makes them work harder.

Two different styles of leadership. LeBron, very encouraging, bringing everybody along, and Kobe, he's testing you, seeing what you gonna give him. If he gonna get at you, he gonna scream at you, he gonna cuss, he gonna do whatever it is. He had his own way of leading guys as well. It's two different sides. I'm just blessed to see both of them.

People talk about Kobe's 81-point game, the second-highest scoring game in NBA history. I saw the game. I don't care if it was 79, 81 - I just remember the game. I remember the moves. I remember the shots. I remember the beauty of it. The numbers? What he shot from the field? I don't care.

I seen an interview with Kobe; he said what separated him from a lot of people was everyone thought 30 points was a lot. He said he never set himself a limit, and that always sticks in my head. He said he'd score 100 if he could. So he never had a limit, I don't put a limit on anything.