Kobe Bryant

“A game would end, and we would fly to the next city. We'd get in at three in the morning, and he'd want me to come and do a stretch with him, instead of just going to bed. He couldn't switch it off. On the flight, while his teammates were sleeping, Brian would…”

“The first thing is that belief comes before ability. And I think most people mistakenly reverse the order.”

“If you want something like the presidency, or being a billionaire, I think that was my quote, not his like the presidency, you should presume there is someone out there who will devote all their time, money, relationships, sense of ethics, everything, in sacri…”

“This part is really important to understand, is that imitation precedes creation.”

“Whenever you get a chance to play against these guys, don't be afraid, man. Just play your game. You'll be surprised. They go for all the moves that high school guys go for.”

“I think that game was vital to how good he became. That level of embarrassment to happen to somebody like him, the next year he came out like a fucking maniac.”

“Work ethic was the one standard by which Bryant measured another player.”

“Everybody watched film of the current players. Kobe would get film of players going way back. He would say Jerry, he would watch Jerry West, Oscar Robinson. He'd say, I want to see what those guys did to be successful.”

“Highly competitive personalities like Jordan and Bryant could absolutely kill a team atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness. That, that sentence right there. You put, take out Brian and Jordan, and put in Steve Jobs are really a ton of the peo…”

“By the end of the week, the whole team was on Kobe's schedule. So what is exactly what is happening at this point in the book, right? He's in high school. He sets the tone with an increased intensity level. His high school teammates match it. That exact same t…”

“As the years go on, the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger. By year five or six, it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer, which is when most other players do like their training and try to focus on i…”

“In team practices, he was determined to never lose a team drill or contest. For almost four years, he would maintain a perfect record in that regard.”

“He's laying out a blueprint, and there's four parts to it. Master the fundamentals, improve your weaknesses, study the greats, and concentrate.”

“There's no way I could have played the way I played if I didn't watch David Thompson or guys prior to me. There's no way Kobe could have played the way he played without watching me play. That's the evolution of basketball. You cannot change that.”

“I made a point of reading the referee's handbook. One of the rules I gleaned from that was that each referee has a designated slot where he's supposed to be on the floor. If the ball, for instance, is in place W, referees X, Y, and Z each have an area of the c…”

“I learned shortly thereafter that Jerry is one of those guys who shoots it straight with people he respects. If he really cares about you, he's gonna tell you things that you don't want to hear, and he always shot it straight with me.”

“Anything that I was seeing or going to see, any type of defense or offense or player or team, they had already encountered years before. I talk with them to learn how to deal with these challenges. After all, why reinvent the wheel when you can just talk to th…”

“When you're doing that, you're just watching game tape. It's no different than a young Kobe Bryant watching videotape of Michael Jordan and magic, magic Johnson, and just constantly being exposed To a million different game scenarios and then using that knowle…”

“Only when you impose such strict standards on yourself can then you impose them on others.”

“If I had to distill every single thing down to one sentence, right? What have I learned so far in the seven years, 300 and something books, all these episodes. About the kind of mentality that these founders had. And I would say you need to combine the work et…”

“Kobe mentions this in that interview with Alex Rodriguez, where he says, you know, when he tells people that if the next 20 years of his life isn't better and he doesn't achieve more than the last 20 years, he would consider that a failure.”

“I'm always amazed when the media report on a superstar athlete who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more on their training and health, as if that's a luck, as if that's a luxury. Look, they have a chef. They have a masseuse. He's got a whole gym …”

“I found that a lot of guys played for financial stability. Once they got that financial stability, the passion, the work ethic, and the obsessiveness was gone.”

“Everything is always the founder's fault. The founder has to take responsibility for everything.”

“Because they're so, such domineering personalities is, is back down from them is the worst thing because they're just going to keep abusing you. They're just going to realize, you know, this person soft, this person's weak. I can basically have my way with the…”

“Michael worked hard, but was more naturally talented, and Kobe worked harder, but was less naturally talented.”

“And what's interesting between Michael and Kobe and Steve Jobs is they were about, like, mastering the fundamentals and trying to get, like, they were addicted to, like, simplicity.”

“MJ knew when to stop. Kobe didn't. You would never find MJ on a court at four AM. He slept at night because he knew sleep was part of his training.”

“Trusting others is the same as giving up control. And they usually have a painfully hard time with that. They have this in common. At some point, they learned that they can only trust themselves. Maybe it was a lesson they learned in childhood or something tha…”

“The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking that we have time. The longer it takes time to capture your wins, the less time you have to enjoy them.”

“If you're aiming to be the best at what you do, you cannot worry about whether your actions will upset other people or what they'll think of you. Your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level. You are not going down to theirs. You're not competing w…”

“The quality that we all share is that we love what we do. We absolutely love it. And it's a pure love. It's not the fame. It's not the money. It's not even the championships. It's loving what we do, and we do it all the time. We study all the time, and as a re…”

“Only when you impose such strict standards on yourself can then you impose them on others.”