Kobe told Woj he got his mentality from Michael Jackson + was paranoid Jerry Buss was gonna amnesty him
What fueled Kobe Bryant's obsessions
What fueled Kobe Bryant's obsessions
In most of these interviews, Bryant endeavored to send a message to management or coaches, teammates or opponents -- sometimes all of those constituencies in a single sitting.
Back in November of 2010 -- and unknown to me -- the target was
Michael Jordan. The
Los Angeles Lakers had won back-to-back championships and Kobe had moved within a title of catching MJ's six rings. Jordan had said something that felt like a slight to Bryant -- leaving him off some sort of list of great players.
When asked about Jordan, Bryant had an opening to tell me his story about Michael Jackson. He told of the pop icon calling him when he was with the Lakers, telling Bryant he could sense that he was taking a lot of grief for being different and that they should get together and talk. This was something Bryant had never discussed before, and I remember my eyes darting back and forth to my tape recorder, fearing a malfunction.
Inside the fourth floor of a Minneapolis hotel restaurant, Bryant was unloading about
the late King of Pop and himself. I'll always remember his jacket -- purple and gold, with five Larry O'Brien trophies emblazoned across the back and sleeves. He looked like the varsity letterman wearing his state title patches at the Friday night pizza haunt. Kobe Bryant was 32 years old, and he didn't care at all.
"We would always talk about how he prepared to make his music, how he prepared for concerts," Bryant told me. "He would teach me what he did: how to make a 'Thriller' album, a 'Bad' album, all the details that went into it. It was all the validation that I needed -- to know that I had to focus on my craft and never waver. Because what he did -- and how he did it -- was psychotic. He helped me get to a level where I was able to win three titles playing with Shaq because of my preparation, my study. And it's only all grown.
"That's the mentality that I have -- it's not an athletic one. It's not from Jordan. It's not from other athletes.
"It's from Michael Jackson."
The thing is, Michael Jordan was everything to Kobe Bryant. He wanted MJ's blessing, the way a generation of players wanted Kobe's. Jordan was never close to Bryant, and Bryant was never close to
LeBron James, and that's just how it goes with most of these iconic stars. The competition is cutthroat -- and it doesn't matter whether they're competing in real time or for the historical narrative. In the age of player empowerment, Bryant took great pride in something few others might have considered as part of their lifetime achievement: He never had to take a pay cut to win a championship
Once, we were having dinner at Javier's in Newport Beach and out of nowhere began one of our strangest conversations: Kobe was convinced that Lakers president Jim Buss wanted to amnesty the remaining money and years on his contract and force him to leave the Lakers. He had no evidence, just a hunch.
"That is never happening," I told him. "They'd burn the city down."
"I think he wants to do it," Kobe insisted.
Well, what would happen then?
"I'll go to New York and play for Phil [Jackson]."
There was no reason to believe Buss ever considered it, but Kobe couldn't stop talking about it that night. In some ways, it was a rare crisis of confidence for Bryant. He had to understand that the Lakers would never cut him loose. Still, he kept coming back to the idea over that long dinner.
We connected a couple of weeks later, and he no longer seemed concerned about the Lakers amnestying his contract. Kobe was on to something else, because he was always on to something else.
2 GOATs
