Kobe Bryant’s LAST GREAT INTERVIEW on The MINDSET Of A WINNER & How To SUCCEED | Lewis Howes

you know when you play the game you hit a game-winning shot you miss a shot the reaction's there you can see how people are responding to it right you can feel it and the energy is there what i do now you don't like i don't see how people are affected by dear basketball or you know creating the punish and you put it out there like i wish i could see a car ride of a family the first time their daughter hears lily's lemonade and what she's doing you know if she's singing along to it that's

not there right so that's the the challenge that's the one thing that i miss is being able to feed off of the energy [Music] welcome everyone to the school of greatness podcast we have the incredible legendary kobe bryant my man it's good to meet you pleasure man um congrats on everything you're an icon a legend and the thing i love the most about you is that you really care about other human beings your heart is so big even though you've been known for this focused mentality that is just almost psycho in some ways but you

care deeply about human beings and i think that's why so many people love you as well so i want to acknowledge you for your kindness and generosity towards humanity my first question for you is i'm curious about who was your greatest teacher growing up because you had an interesting childhood being in italy for a while coming back to philadelphia i think it was yeah who was the greatest teacher for you in those early days it was funny i had a lot of them my parents were great you know growing up you know they instilled in

me the importance of imagination of curiosity and understanding that okay if you want to accomplish something i'm not just going to sit here and say yes you can do whatever you want yes you can but you have to also put in the work to get there right so they taught me at a really early age man and when you grow up as a kid thinking that the world is your oyster all things are possible if you put in the work to do it you know you grew up having that fundamental belief yeah who was more

influential for you your father or mother both were influential at different points yeah right my uh my mom was there on a daily basis uh my father was really influential at a really critical time where i i had a summer where i played basketball when i was like 10 or 11 years old and a very prominent summer league in philadelphia called the sunny hill league where my father played my uncle played and they were like all-time greats yeah stuff and will chamberlain played in the league you know uh early pro-morrow playing league and here i

come playing and i don't score one point the entire summer really not one how old were you 11 10 11. and you're playing against other 10 11 year olds or you need to score once not one were you in the game i was in the game how did you not score because that was terrible really yeah that's 10 11 years old that's awful i mean i you know and i had these big knee pads on because i was growing really fast i had socks all the way up here and i had like the high tops

like skinny as hell and i scored not a free throw not a nothing not a lucky shot not a breakaway layup zero points and i remember crying about it and being upset about it and my father just gave me a hug and said listen whether you score zero or score 60 i'm gonna love you no matter what wow now that is the most important thing that you can say to a child because from there i was like okay that gives me all the confidence in the world to fail i have the security there but to

hell with that i'm scoring 60. let's go right right right from there i just went to work i just stayed with him i kept practicing kept practicing hip practice is that when you think the mentality of hard work started to come in for you at that age when you failed so miserably i guess that summer i think that's when the idea of understanding a long-term view became important because i wasn't going to catch these kids in a week i wasn't going to catch them in a year right so that's when i sat down and said

okay this is going to take some thought all right what i want to work on first all right shooting all right let's knock this out let's focus on this half a year six months do nothing but shoot right after that all right creating your own shot and then you focus so you start i started creating a menu of things when i came back the next summer i was a little bit better right yeah immediately being like i've got my jump shot from 15 i've got yeah i got my jump shot from 15 i got my

three-point shot like just open shots not miss open shots right be able to shoot it with speed because those kids are so much more athletic yeah and then the next time i came back was a little better the summer came back somewhere it was a little better i scored yeah it wasn't much right but i scored and this is 12 13. 12 13. then 14 came around back half of 13 14 uh years old and then i was just killing everyone and it happened in two years and i wasn't expecting to happen in two years

but it did because what i had to do was work on the basics and the fundamentals well they relied on their athleticism and their natural ability and because i stick to the fundamentals it just caught up to them and then my body you know my knees stopped hurting i grew into my frame and and then your athleticism once you have the fundamentals exactly the hard work the mindset and you attack on the elections wow so from 13 your good average stuff i was good i was good and then about about like the end of my

third like right when i was turning 14 i became the best player in the state 14 at 14. so from 12 to 14 you went from scoring zero to being the best in the state of all ages yeah but it's it's simple like if you do the math on this right like if you if you're thinking about how often kids are playing right i'll tell this to my to my daughter and my daughter's team as well that i coach it's a simple thing of math if you want to be a great player if you play

every single day two three hours every single day or course of a year how much better are you getting most kids will play maybe you know an hour and a half two days a week right put a math on that season it's not going it's not going to get it done get it done right so if you're obsessed with obsessive obsessively training two three hours every single day over a year over two years you're accelerating you make quantum leaps man just doing a summer camp for two weeks you you see a difference i remember playing

basketball i mean you see it you get a lot better you come back more confident playing on the playground with guys who used to beat you yeah and like i tell the parents of my team i said it's it's when i say your kids are going to become great basketball players and like really like yeah it's not there's no math that's it show up every single day show up every single day do the work but you have this mamba mentality your books coming out soon and how did you develop this there's a there's a beautiful

story that i love from jay williams i know if you remember jason williams where he did an interview a while back and he talked about how when he played you i think the first time one of the first times he played against you he was he was like i'm going to show up so early to the court to warm up and practice like before anyone yeah he shows up at the court i don't know if it was in l.a or where i was and you were the only one there already shooting free throws already doing

your fundamentals he goes i'm going to stay here until kobe leaves and then he was like gosh an hour and a half two hours later i gotta go i'm tired and kobe's still shooting free throws scoring like just going over the fundamentals and he goes and then we played that game and you were lights out and he came up to you afterwards and said like dude why were you in there for so long and how'd you do it and he said this is what he said you said he said i knew you were watching and

i wanted to show you i was willing to outwork you right something along those lines yeah yeah i don't know if you remember this i remember that you remember yeah and i thought that was so powerful that you have this mindset but how did you develop that i don't know if that's what you call the mom of mindset but how did you develop that and when did it start it started in middle school and high school because a lot of the kids that i was playing against were inner city kids yeah and so you're looking

at me as if okay this kid's soft right he's from the suburbs of philadelphia his father played in the nba he played professionally he's got a dz got it easy born on second but you know all this sort of stuff right and so they felt like they could try to be physical or try to intimidate me and do this other stuff which they couldn't right but now i'm saying okay well you're trying to attack me how am i going to attack you how can i mentally figure out ways to break you down how can i

show you that no i have the edge right and so that's when it first started for me is figuring out how to get the upper hand on an opponent that way and what would you do to mentally break people down then well i mean you know like we used to have an all-american camp that i used to go to and you know at the time when i first showed i was a sophomore and um one of the things i would do is while everybody would be at the cafeteria work you know eating and doing all

sorts of stuff i just go back to the gym let's go right but now you're in a tough position cause you're like okay i want to be like i'm following the kid to go work out but i know he's working he's up early and he's doing all this other stuff and so that was my way of showing them yeah yeah i may be from the suburbs but you're not gonna outwork me wow and i'm mentally gonna did someone teach you that was that just the thing that you decided like i'm gonna get in people's minds

um i think it's just it's just figuring out ways to to to be better and and to win the game and it started as a defense mechanism because you know they were the ones talking trash to me and you know kid from italy blah blah blah and all sorts of stuff it was like okay i gotta i can't let them you know i gotta defend myself yeah right and then it became okay you know i'm i'm pretty witty i can say some pretty witty things yeah yeah i'm in italian yeah yeah it's interesting you know

i never i never was physically gifted to uh an extreme level i was always really good but i was never like the fastest or biggest strongest but i remember my edge was i'm not going to go party and i'm not going to drink alcohol right so i've never been drunk still because i was like i need every edge when guys were out partying late at night who are better than me and drinking and showing up hungover i was like i'm going to be more focused and have a clearer vision and but i wasn't waking up

at 4 am like you so that's that's interesting because like when i when i played um one of the things i had to learn is how to get the best out of my teammates yeah and most people think it's a simple thing you know passing the ball you know but that's not how you make guys better you have to really affect their behavior how do you do that so yeah like i would tell guys you know we got back to backs you know i don't care if we're in miami i don't care if we're in

a great city or chicago you can't go out we gotta get rest right back-to-back games back-to-back games right monday tuesday play monday and play again tuesday you guys aren't going to listen right you don't you know right so a few times say all right well i'll go out go out together really i'll drink with you right but the next morning i'm banging on your door at five in the morning let's go they're not getting where are we going i hung out with you now you come hang out with me this is what we do all

right let's go here at the gym we're working out right we hit the bus we go to practice we play that night and they're dead and they're dead and they're like lesson learned lesson take them out once listen if you're gonna do that do that but don't let that compromise what we're here to do right this is why we're here this is why you're here in the first place yeah right and if we're going to win a championship we have to have that championship mentality work ethic that's it so you got to show them no

kobe can do that and still has the energy to get up and do this so either i got to meet that same energy or i've got to keep my butt more early yeah wow what are some other things you did to uh rise the level of the your teammates what are some other ways that you can uh and what do you think people can do in general with the business team or any sports team i think you have to you have to listen you have to pay attention to to what your colleagues or teammates are

saying and what are certain things that drive them certain things that motivate them that trigger them uh and uh one of my favorite ones powell hates it every time i tell a story he hates it but we lost to the celtics in ohio and it was a physical series i mean they beat the crap out of us yeah and so we're going to the olympic gear that year we wound up playing spain for the gold medal match and we beat them and so now we come back to start training camp and powell shows up first

day of training camp i had my gold medal hanging in his locker oh no and he i mean like the one thing that he truly truly loves is his country of course that is like everything to him so it just drove him crazy i said pal listen he said you're an [ __ ] i said listen pal you lost to the celtics you lost to us in a gold medal match let's not make this three in a row this year wow let's win this thing and that was that was it for him and he probably

stepped up at a whole other level well he you know powell was a phenomenon to begin with and then for him was just stepping up to a level of physicality yeah that we needed him to get to which he did and we went on to win back-to-back championships my man yeah yeah how important is understanding human psychology and human behavior to work with a team as opposed to just relying on your gifts and talents it's uh it's probably the most important thing you know when you're in this culture in our society you can do some

phenomenal things individually but they'll never reach their full potential unless you do them collectively and you have to figure out how to do that and you know phil jackson was great at that and phil uh he wouldn't just coach the team or coach the game but he'd read everything about every single player he learned about your history how you grew up um how you were raised where where were you ray you know he'll read every interview and he'll learn about you and gives him a better understanding of what's motivating you uh or what your insecurities

are right and then it just helps them communicate with you better or even push a button here if he needs to when did you learn that it was important to understand who your teammates are what their likes or dislikes are was that in high school for you or more no i learned it from phil there was a stretch um in o3 where shaq was out with an injury and phil called me up to his office and said okay we need you to really turn on the afterburners and start scoring the ball if you have to

win so i did and i wound up scoring i think it was nine straight games 40 plus points nine straight nine straight games and then shaq comes back sec his second to last game of that and then phil calls him to his office and says cole okay i need you to dial it back i'm like why like we're winning i don't understand because our goal is to win a championship and we can get through the western conference with you playing this way but in the east you know we can dominate them inside with shaq and

the post but if you continue to do this we'll lose shaq we'll lose him his motivation his excitement triggers him right so i need you to pull back so we can pull shaq forward for june wow and i just looked at him like this smart dude wow yeah it's one smart dude man so i pulled pulled it back wow yeah what do you think what's been the greatest challenge you've had since leaving the game the greatest challenge um i think it's you know i mean you won an oscar you're you're launching podcasts and shows and

you've got a book coming out yeah but it's it's uh it's different though like you know um we were just talking about it here in the office the other day you know when you play the game you hit a game-winning shot you miss a shot the reaction's there you can see how people are responding to it right you can feel it the energy is the energy is there what i do now you don't like i don't see how people are affected by deer basketball or you know creating the punies and you put it out there

like i wish i could see a car ride of a family the first time their daughter hears lily's lemonade and what she's doing you know if she's singing along to it that's not there right so that's the the challenge that's the one thing that i miss is being able to feedback off of the energy the instant feedback that you get from shoot missing or scoring a shot winning or losing a game it's like either way you're getting a result right yes yes that's the one thing and when i went to uh because i spent a

lot of time with mentors as well up at pixar and disney studios they've been absolutely wonderful animation disney animation and i talked to him about frozen and moana and how our kids love them and they're always like oh that's awesome and they want to hear because they don't ever get a chance to truly see it like they're not sitting in a movie theater like oh no and they don't have time to go to disneyland and walk around the park and see how many families are enjoying the content that they've created because they're busy making the

next creating yes yes so that that's the one thing what do you think the biggest challenge is for most athletes after they retire i think it's the fear of starting anew and that was certainly uh present for me as well really yeah like identity you mean or no it's starting from scratch right because when you when you play for 20 years i play for 20 years you reach a certain level you're like okay wait a minute i have to start again at the base of a mountain and try to climb the top of this mountain

first of all what mountain am i climbing i don't even know like what the hell am i going to be doing it'd be it's very it's very scary it's very even for you oh absolutely absolutely and the thing that helped me actually was hurting my achilles because that forced me to sit there and say okay the day could be today that your career is over at any time when you were playing you mean yeah now what do you do you have these ideas about doing something with your life after basketball but what if today is

the day that you that's it now what do you do so i had all this time sitting there with my achilles injury and contemplating and thinking and i said i better get to work wow that was that what was the vision for you afterwards then was it to do what you're doing now or did you have other ideas or what is what's the vision i struggle with it at first because the first question i asked which is the wrong question is what's the biggest industry i can get into was it more money thinking more money

thinking saying okay athletes are saying you can't make more revenue when you retire this is your source of your income is here saying okay that's a challenge what can i do and i remember going didn't you launch a fund or something i did yeah i did and so i i started i went for a ride and i said okay stop thinking of it that way you're thinking of it the wrong way why did you start playing basketball because i loved it all right what do you love to do oh well i love to tell stories

all right let's do that and then that's where it started for me and um and then on top of that it became things like you know you started learning more about the financial industry and about players going broke once they retire and say okay how can i how can i minimize the chances of that happening what are things that i can do [Music] to invest my money smartly also help control some of that outcome to a certain extent right and that's when i uh called mike ripoli who michael poley was a entrepreneur who built vitamin

water pirates booting some other companies and started learning from them and then from that came the opportunity to invest in body armor yeah and uh which yeah which we're taking now delicious um but all that came from the injury and really having to self-assess and uh you know face that really dark room of what comes next storytelling is something you're really passionate about what's a story uh over your life that's been a constant theme that you go back to is there something you heard as a kid that you that really resonates with you or a

book or a movie that just feels like this is me yeah that's funny um movies there are plenty but there's a quote from one of my english teachers a little marion named mr fisk he had a great quote that said rest at the end not in the middle and that's something i always live by you know i'm not going to rest i'm going to keep on pushing now a lot of answers that i don't have even questions that i don't have but i'm just going to keep going i'm just going to keep going and i'll

figure these things out as you go right and you just continue to build that way so that i try to live by that all the time rest at the end rest at the end what's the question that eats you alive the most that you haven't answered yet the question that eats me alive that haven't answered yet but you're still looking um i'm still looking for the answer uh how to tell a good story i don't think i don't think anybody has that answer you know like when i sat down uh to write do your basketball

i was like okay what do i want to say and you have certain acts in how you can structure certain things right the ebbs and flows of story certain formulas that have been there since the beginning of time but it's such an in that an exact same so yeah right and so that one question is really interesting why do you want to tell a great story i think stories is what moves the world whether it's an inspirational story it's an informational one nothing in this world moves without story you know being from the political world

sports world nothing that we have moves without story um and so i think that is the root of everything and if we're going to try to make the world a better place the story is the right place to start i agree but most people understand like my last year people would come up to me and say okay what are you going to do i said i'm going to be a storyteller really and they go like what are you talking about all right man so so what are you really happy yeah like what's going to happen

when you retire is you're going to go through like a week of depression then the second week is going to be like denial and also right i'm like dude seriously i'm good so after a while i just got sick of it and i just just said i don't know i'll go play golf or something right you just tell them a lot i'm not going to do anything whatever i'm not going to do anything i'm just going to sit around what does losing feel like to you oh it's exciting why is it exciting because it means

you have different ways to get better there's certain things that you can figure out that you can take advantage of right certain weaknesses that were exposed um that you need to shore up right so it was exciting i mean it sucks to lose but at the same time there are answers there if you just look at them um because you get the information from losing more than from winning probably yeah yeah i mean the answers are there when you win too you you just have to look at them yeah right so it's a constant process

it's exciting when you win it's exciting when you lose because the process should be exactly the same whether you win or you lose as you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better you find things that you've done well that worked figure out how did they work why did they work how can you make them work again yeah and but the hardest thing is to face that stuff um that's a really really tough challenge you mean face it you mean look yourself in the mirror and say okay this

is how i showed up or this is what happened and give an example so katie lou samuelson is one of the best college basketball players in the country she plays at uconn she's going to be a senior right now right now and uh she's from huntington beach out here by us and so she comes down and she works with some of my my girls on the team and she helps coach and they just had a really tough season last year where they lost to notre dame in the final that's right really tough first loss first

loss years right and so i actually said have you watched the notre dame game she was like no well why not he said i don't want to watch that i said i know you don't but you're going to play notre dame to share yeah yeah there's a chance that you see him again in the final well you probably see me here i'd say well you can't show up and play them without knowing why you lost that one right so you know the mistakes that you've made in that game you have to do the hard stuff

and watch that game and study that game to not make those mistakes over and over again just because you weren't brave enough to face it so she came down to the office i brought down the officer we sat down we watched that game together right you gotta you gotta deal with it face it gotta deal with it face it learn from it wow it must have been cringing for her and she'd be like oh you're playing like we could have won all these things that's exactly it isn't it i just did that one thing exactly

but i didn't get that foul if i was scoring that lay up exactly right you're looking at oh there's the mismatch oh there's the gap you know and all those little things and it sucks but but you don't want to have that feeling again do you right so you got to really study it face it and uh not to say you'll win the next time you face but your least you'll give yourself a better better chance yeah and did you what was your uh routine and ritual like after every game would you watch almost every

game over or certain games all of them every game you watch every game the whole game the whole game no way yeah so it started with me when i was a um when phil jackson's his first year here with the lakers one of assistant coaches his name is tex winner and i call him yoda i mean he was like 82 when he got wow and uh he was responsible for teaching me the triangle offense how were you then i was 21. so three years four years in the league yeah so about my fourth year okay

and so uh i go up to his room and this is when you're there are no ipads or anything like that right so when you're on the road okay yeah you have to call down to the front desk and they have to bring up the tv with the whole you know the rolly thing and the vhs and the cassette tape you pop it in and i thought we were going to watch what we call touches so watch all your touches when you have the ball all the decisions you make good ones and bad no we're

watching the start of the game oh my god to the end of the game and not like not like the tv feed watching the in arena feed the layup line the time outs oh my gosh yeah rewinding stopping fast forward rewinding slow motion every little thing every game of that season with the 82 year old yoda oh my gosh who is as brutally honest as you can get what did that teach you that season oh it taught me to look at detail um right look i think things that they're smallest right look at body language

you know um look at the energy between players our team and the other team wow right look at the tactics you know look at the overall strategy and to look at how tactically things are manifesting themselves and because i watched so much film then it gave me the ability to see game in real time as if i was watching film wow where i can see because a lot of times the game starts moving really fast but if you train yourself to watch hours and hours of film the game's not moving that fast anymore you can

really recognize who's doing what and why you can position guys in the right places in real time um seeing it before it happens yes yeah we you know on football we'd watch it once a week game film but not you know after every game it was only one game a week you got like three or three weeks sometimes yeah yeah you gotta you gotta go i don't know what time i know tom brady is obsessive over game from as well i mean watching his show uh that came out tomorrow's the time was all about him

just in there studying even months after the game he's studying to prepare right it's just like he's not stopped and that's that's one of the keys you think it's like if you're not watching film whether it be as a speaker on stage or a performer and a musician if you're not watching yourself back you've got to learn man i mean beyonce same same thing really after a performance she's immediately on her laptop re-watching the performance no way yes seeing how to do things better what could we have done differently right i mean it's just it's

it's an obsessiveness that comes along with it you want things to be as perfect as they can be understanding that nothing is ever perfect but the challenge is try to get them as perfect as they can be and what can you do it's in your control so control what you can i can watch film all day long it's going to help me get better yes yes now did you have your teammates also follow on this obsessiveness that you had as well or did you just encourage them or what was the no you can't push somebody

to do that right but what you can do is is alter behavior and also change the vernacular of how they speak about the game so on team buses team planes in a locker room after practice i would look at the film i'd pull powell lamar d fish pull him aside and say let's look at this all right we probably should have done this that and the other so you'll show them the game from a little bit here and there and then you speak to them in executional terms it's never come on guys we can do

better come on guys we can do better that's rah-rah stuff right a leader must give very tactical you know uh things that we can do adjustments okay the defense is doing this that and the other that means we should probably do this this by midway through the season through that behavior you start seeing them communicating the same way back to you right and it's like okay cold they're doing this that on the other to you maybe we should do this like okay yeah awesome great let's do it yeah yeah what about um season 16 17

18 are you still watching every game film as obsessively as the first 10 years not now no well when i was playing when you were playing yeah so when i was playing what i would do is um study the film but study our younger players and see what areas do they need to develop in and how can i help them develop i mean that's that was the big challenge as you move from you know being the single dominant player to understanding okay i have to help these other guys how do i lift everyone else up

it's tough what i mean you're so dominant your whole career one of the greatest of all time was there a weakness that you had or did you because obviously you're always trying to master your weaknesses so they became strengths but at the end or towards the end did you ever feel like gosh i still haven't like mastered this one part of the game the challenge for me was always compassion and empathy because you're like guys let's go get results shut up don't complain right i want to hear your whining i don't want to hear it

no excuses don't tell me how rough the water is just bring the boat in you know i don't i don't want to hear it you know and it's uh funny it's understanding like okay these guys have lives right outside of here they have other things happening other things happening to them that may be affecting the way that they're practicing or the way that they're performing right and it was hard for me to understand that because nothing bothered me you know anything personally that never phased me when i compartmentalized it very well but so i couldn't

understand how my teammates couldn't do that either until i you know so i had to really work on that aspect of it that's hard [ __ ] do you feel like you never really had the compassion you wish you would have had like until the last maybe a couple years yeah so i think about 09 things started changing for me i started really uh making a conscious effort to better understand and that doesn't mean i mean you have compassion and empathy so you go softer on them it's more like you you put you put yourself

to the side and you put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're feeling and then you have to make certain decisions of okay what buttons do i need to push for this player to get them to the next level so it's never it's not sit around and all it's all happy-go-lucky type of thing if your leader your job is to get the best out of them even if they may not like it at that time yeah wow what are you most proud of from your 20 seasons um honestly it was sounds uh may sound

a little shallow but i gotta say beating the celtics in game seven um that's what i'm most proud of because it was it was the hardest um you know you're playing with rajon rondo paul pierce kevin garnett all-stars ray allen and you know it was myself powell and the players that other teams didn't want and you know how did we figure out as a group what to do and the reason why i loved that series so much is that we went down three games to two against boston and now you got two games coming home

i remember sitting in the locker room and they beat the crap out of us too that game so we're sitting in the locker room and it's really really quiet i'm sitting there looking around and we just lost to celebration 08 so this is like revenge right they're kicking our butt again right so i sit around i just started laughing i started laughing and then i remembered uh derrick fisher looked at me like and lamar looked at me and goes what what is funny i said dude they beat the crap [ __ ] they just beat

the crap out and say i'm missing the part where that's funny i said man listen if we start this season and they say you know all you have to do is win two games at home in your nba champ would you take that yeah and like right yeah that's all we got to do yeah go count three two we're nba champions all you gotta do is wait till get two games in a row that's it we'll take care of the first game and i promise you they're not winning game seven on our home floor it's

not happening so we all just laughed about it and then we went out and we figured it out but that game seven was we're down 15 points in the fourth quarter right and that's when you have to collectively look at each other and say you know the spirit of your team must be good because at that moment is when teams fracture if the energy amongst each other isn't there that trust isn't there you're done and we were able to collectively dig deep together and say all right we're going to figure this thing out wow and

i wasn't playing well i wasn't shooting the ball well at all um and so my teammates picked you up and they delivered yes yeah wow cash man i want to be respectful for your time i know probably like five to seven minutes left um i saw on instagram that you're up at like 4 a.m lifting by yourself in the dark and again you've had in one of the most incredible careers arguably of all time uh you know made all the money in the world got a freaking oscar now you've got all these other things happening

and yet you're still waking up or at least you're in the gym at 4 00 a.m working out and you just turned 40 right which congratulations by the way i hope i look as good as you um why still wake up that early and train at this level in your life right now well i mean there are several factors for that like when i first retired i let myself go a little bit really you got a little oh yeah a little chubby life bring it to me let's go steak oh let's let's go right milkshakes

let's do it let's do it and then the challenge was okay can i get back in shape and it's it's really hard because there's no end goal there's no game there's no season there's nothing so how do you motivate yourself to do how do you how do you and so for me it was like okay i have to have to aim for something so i said i want to aim for size i want to aim for bulk right so that's a tangible thing i'm gonna go for that right but then also it's you know my

children because like you know your kids can't see how hard you work you go to office they come in the studio they don't really see the effort right so how can we teach our children what it means to work hard well you do it through training right so when i get up in the morning my daughter goes with me 4 am 4 am my 15 year old goes with me she goes with him before school and it becomes a daddy daughter thing that's cool she just got her permit right so she drives in the morning

it becomes a cool thing right but through that process she understands the value of hard work and things taking time and the same thing with my 12 year old right she practices every day right and so it's through those behaviors is where i find the motivation to do it yeah and what brings you the most joy right now being with my family really that is man that is the most fun it's just um you know it's hanging out with them all summer uh being able to like do things that i ordinarily couldn't do yeah uh

because of training because it's sure and stuff like that so being around them and watching bianca grow up because a lot of things that i missed with natalie and gianna because i was playing so being there every day with them is so much fun man so it brings me the most joy that's amazing and what does what does love feel like for you what does love feel like hmm happiness is such a i don't really think i would describe love as happiness i think i'd describe it as a beautiful journey um you know it has

its ups and downs right whether it's in marriage or whether it's in the career you know things are never perfect yeah but through love you continue to persevere and you move through them you move through and then through that storm beautiful sun emerges yeah right inevitably another storm comes guess what you ride that one out too so i think love is a certain determination and persistence to go through the good times and the bad times with the someone or something uh that you truly love um you've got a new podcast out right now called the

punish which i started listening to i'd listen to the first two episodes it's incredible they're like 13 to 15 minutes um episodic uh storytelling you know cartoons i guess yes for kids and the thing i love about it the most is this it's funny it's entertaining there's original music there's all these different characters you're teaching history like in a fun way which i like the last one where it's like you know we we talk about history so we don't repeat it right in our own lives and then you teach lessons about overcoming failure for kids

and insecurities and challenges we're facing and i think it's beautiful can you talk about the peonies in the podcast and what it's all about yeah so the peonies um came to me from you know we have our family tradition where we watch um the sandlot every fourth of july god it's the greatest movie the greatest squad it's the best baby dude so like that's our family ritual oh my god every fourth of july sandlot sandlot right and so after watching the sandlot when i was like we need a new sports movie like this right yeah

i started kind of concepting ideas and stuff but nothing i truly loved and then uh over thanksgiving our other rituals to watch charlie brown right in the pumpkin patch right so we watch that and then i go well wait a minute let's just put those together put those together right and i already had written some stories individual stories for peony pete and uh and bibi characters who are the characters and the communities and i said well let's combine those let's let's and then from that that's when the puny's started coming to fruition and i started

thinking about the characters and you know why does this show need to exist and what are some of the deeper messages that can be there that yeah consciously you may not observe but but you can sense and feel and that's when i started constructing the show and are you part of the whole process are you helping write the script are you helping so we have a great uh um young producer here who actually started here three years ago while he was still at sc and has since grown in the greatest school yeah greatest film school

and so um he and i worked together hand in hand on outlining every single episode so we outlined each episode the story beats and then we found a great writer named john holler he's a great writer and so we gave him the outline and he just made it a thousand times better wow um and then i just i directed each episode and you oversee it all you had you you yeah yeah yeah i directed it so yeah um you know the other challenge was finding great actors voice acting for different skills yes it's a it's

a challenging art form i mean you really have to be able to communicate a lot just in your mind absolutely it's an energy yes yeah and so the trick was finding actors that have not lost that childlike quality right they can still imagine themselves being children being at the park and playing right and once we found them they really brought the characters to life and now here we are with the puny's man it's amazing i want you guys to go download it right now subscribe it's the puny's on apple podcast for spotify and everything anywhere

podcasts are at i'm telling you guys there's a lot of parents to listen to this show download this listen to it in your car and do me a favor take a video of your kids in the car and send it to me um send it to me or tag me on instagram tag kobe on instagram yes kobe bryant that would be amazing because that's what's going to give you great feedback oh gosh that would be amazing seeing how kids react so put your phone again don't don't film and drive do it when you have someone

else filming it right but make sure or put it on a gopro and just press record yes it's about 15 minutes long take your kids to school it is like a park too like saturday we made them on saturdays like every saturday it's a new episode because saturday is normally the day us parents drive our kids to different sporting events to the pool the games the parts that's why every episode has to be between 12 to you know 15 16 minutes right because that's normally the drive yeah right sometimes it may be longer and in

that case you can play multiple episodes but that's something you can listen to on your way to an event it's like mini frozen and moana episodes right it's like little original music and all that stuff it's really cool go download it again take a video and tag kobe uh on instagram are you on the screen i am on instagram yeah tagging especially lily's lemonade listen to lily's lemonade and i would love to see kids out there trying to trying to do the lily's lemonade song love it hopefully we'll get a bunch of video clips for

you and your book is out in october it's called mamba mindset do you want to talk briefly about that well the mentality book is is really about process and craft i've broken the book up into two sections and process is really about the process of preparing you know through injury recovery uh studying of the game and then the craft is the actual performance and the tactics and so a lot of things that i learned through the game were through photos you can look at a photo and see like a player making a move look at

the angle of his feet look how he's using his hands on defense and i can really break down things to the smallest detail through that and that's what you'll see in this book i mean it's really a basketball bible yeah mom moment but it's also your mindset bible right yeah yeah when you see how i break things down like how i'm looking at things the smallest of detail yeah and that's the best way to understand how to have that kind of mentality is to ask questions then find answers and then lead to more questions and

you find more answers and that's what the book is i love it make sure you guys get the book you can pre-order it right now download the punys follow you on social media the final question is what's your definition of greatness i think the definition of greatness is to inspire the people next to you yeah i think that's what greatness is or should be it's not something that's that that lives and dies with one person it's how can you inspire a person to then in turn inspire another person that inspires another person and that's how

you create something that i think lasts forever yeah and i think that's our challenge as people is to um is to figure out how our story can impact others and motivate them in a way to create their own greatness well i want to acknowledge you again man for the inspiration you're just a symbol of truth and inspiration to so many people thanks man and um i just appreciate you as a human so appreciate your thanks man appreciate your brother