Kobe Bryant’s ‘Mamba Mentality’ is one of the most talked about mindsets in the history of the NBA. Kobe was obsessed with being the best version of himself to a degree where he would do whatever it took and then some more to get there. And time and again, when he was still with us, Bryant would talk about what the mentality meant to him and how he developed it.
Most know Kobe as the superstar he became after he joined the Lakers. Winning 5 championships along with 2 Finals MVPs tends to lead to that. However, long before he got anywhere near the NBA, Bryant was already obsessed with honing his craft and becoming the best. Even at the high school level, his mentality was that nobody would be better than him.
In a 2019 interview with Patrick Bet-David, Kobe spoke about his high school ‘kill-list’, and how any player ranked higher than him almost immediately became a target for him to beat.
(starts at 9:16 minutes):
Patrick Bet-David: “So when you size your peers up, how do you size them up? I’m talking, you’re 13 years old, you’re sizing peers up. What lens are you looking through at your peers?”
Kobe Bryant: “So at 13 years old, I had a kill-list. So you know, they used to these rankings, it was Street & Smith’s basketball rankings. And I was nowhere to be found. Cuz I was like 6’4”, scrawny, like 160 pounds soaking wet. So I was like 57 on the list. So I would look at 56, 55, all the way up to No. 1, who these players are, what club teams they play for.
“So when we go on the AAU travel circuit, I gotta hunt them down, right? And so that became my mission in high school, is to check off every person, all those 56 other names, and hunt them down. Knock them down. That was it.”
Young players often don’t realize that becoming the very best in sports requires tenacity and competitiveness that borders on maniacal. The fact that Bryant had it from such a young age shows that he was always destined for greatness. And in hindsight, it’s safe to say that the life he lived and the career he had was better than most of those 56 players ranked ahead of him in high school.
