Top Highlights

• Though that night as a rookie in Cleveland he said that he didn’t know how he would get to the top, he had settled on an answer he had known all along. He was going to grind his way there—implacably, relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game, night after night, game after game, until he found a dominance born of his ability to outwork e...
• He is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game, one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense preparation, with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him.
• The confidence remained in place because Bryant virtually excluded any challenge to it, explained Mumford. “He won’t allow himself to deal with any contrary view.”
• As a close family friend will note, Kobe Bryant’s young life reminded her of an old episode of the TV show The Twilight Zone, about a child so worshiped by his own family that every day is his birthday.
• Pam and Joe elected to name their son Kobe, supposedly because during Pam’s pregnancy they had a scrumptious meal at a Japanese steak house in nearby King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Actually, they would both explain later, they liked the sound of the name and pronounced it Ko-bee, not Ko-bay, as it is in Japanese.