When you think about Kobe Bryant‘s game, there is one thing that always stands out, his scoring prowess. Kobe was one of the greatest scorers in the history of the game and currently ranks 4th on the all-time charts, with 33,643 points to his name after playing 20 seasons in the league for the Los Angeles.
Kobe was so obsessed with scoring that he used to get criticized for not passing the ball to his teammates during games. It was later revealed by coach Phil Handy that Kobe didn’t pass the ball to them because he didn’t trust them as he didn’t respect their work ethic.
Kobe Bryant Revealed The Two Things He Enjoyed Doing More Than Scoring
Kobe just had a different way of looking at things, but he once revealed that scoring isn’t what gave him the most enjoyment. Back in 2008, when he was in Beijing for the Olympics, Bryant revealed in an interview that passing the ball and playing defense are two things that give him more enjoyment than scoring.
“Scoring is something that I do when necessary. It’s not something that I feel like I have to do or enjoy doing to the point where it is a detriment to the team. I score when I have to score. I’d much rather get other guys involved and have them score 25-30 points, have career highs, and things like that. Sometimes shots aren’t falling, you got to take games over and that’s what I do. But on the USA team, it was a breath of fresh air because I could really focus on what I really really love to do, which is to play defense. I mean I just love it.”
“When you come into a game and you know you are going up against a person who’s averaging 27 points, averaging 25 points and you know that for your team to be successful you have to slow him down, your team is counting on you to stop him. I really enjoy that. It was really easy to sacrifice the scoring part of it, I don’t worry about that stuff too much.”
That was a very interesting response. We can basically figure out that if Kobe respected your work ethic and commitment, he would be more than willing to pass you the ball, but it took a whole lot of effort to earn that respect.
His defense is something that tends to get overlooked, as he really was excellent on that end of the floor. Only Tim Duncan (15) made more All-Defensive teams than Bryant, who made it 12 times during his career. He got a lot of enjoyment out of shutting opponents down, and it was a big reason why his teams had a lot of success.
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