Name: Kobe Bryant's Greatest Speech | BEST Motivation Ever
Uploaded: 2024-06-07T14:03:56.000Z
Duration: 12 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

I had a purpose. I wanted to be one of the best basketball players to ever play.

Past simple

And anything else that was outside of that lane, I didn't have time for.

There's a quote from one of my English teachers, a little man named Mr. Fisk.

He had a great quote that said, rest at the end, not in the middle.

And that's something I'll always live by.

I'm not going to rest, I'm going to keep on pushing now.

There's a lot of answers that I don't have, even questions that I don't have.

I'm just going to keep going, and I'll figure these things out as I go.

At what age did that goal become crystal clear?

I made that deal with myself at 13 years old.

I would watch Magic play, I'd watch Michael play, and I would see them do these unbelievable things, and I'd say, you know, can I get to that level?

And so that curiosity to see where I could push this thing led me down that path, I think.

I had a summer where I played basketball when I was like 10 or 11 years old.

And here I come, playing, and I don't score one point the entire summer.

Not a lucky shot, not a breakaway layup, zero points.

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,

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 stayed with it, and I kept practicing, kept practicing, kept practicing.

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.

So that's when I sat down and said, okay, this is going to take some thought.

Half a year, six months, do nothing but shoot.

After that, all right, creating your own shot.

When I came back the next summer, I was a little bit better.

Then 14 came around, back half at 13, 14 years old.

And I wasn't expecting it to happen in two years, but it did.

Because what I had to do was work on the basics and the fundamentals.

But 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 then it was game over.

Were you always competitive from the day you were born?

Competitive with things that I participated in.

So, like, you know, basketball for me was the most important thing.

So everything I saw, whether it was TV shows, whether it was books I read, people I talked to, everything was done to try to learn how to become a better basketball player.

And so when you have that point of view, then literally the world becomes your library to help you to become better at your craft.

And so, you know, they used to do these rankings.

It was Street and Smith basketball rankings.

And I was nowhere to be found because I was like 6'4", scrawny, like 160 pounds soaking wet.

And so I would look at 56, 55, all the way up to number one, who these players are, what club teams they played for.

So when we go on an AAU travel circuit, I got to hunt them down, right?

And so that became my mission in high school is to check off every other person, all those 56 other names, hunt them down and knock them down.

So when we played at 13, I would size you up and see what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Are you good at it just because you're bigger and stronger than everybody else?

Or is there actually thought and skill that you put into it?

And when I'd play, I'd play to my weaknesses.

I always work on the things during those games that I was weak at.

What was really your work ethic like and for how long did you stay disciplined?

It was an everyday process in trying to figure out strengths and weaknesses.

My hands are big, but they're not massive.

So you got to figure out ways to strengthen them so your hands are strong enough to be able to palm a ball and do the things that you need to do.

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Kobe Bryant's Greatest Speech | BEST Motivation Ever

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