Kobe Bryant was one of the most intelligent players to ever step onto a basketball court. Bryant was a true student of the game through his rigorous studying of basketball and incredible training regimens. He immersed himself into the world of basketball to be as potent a weapon as possible.
A lot of Kobe’s game was built off of the muscle memory he had developed on shots. Elite players know when a shot is going to be a good one, so when those shots don’t fall, players can go into a funk and doubt themselves. Not Kobe though.
Former NBA swingman Gerald Henderson wrote down a story in The Players Tribune about Bryant figuring out that the rim was a quarter-inch off during a game in 2009 (Henderson’s rookie season) between the Charlotte Bobcats and the Los Angeles Lakers.
“All of a sudden, I looked up and Kobe had stopped shooting. He was holding the ball on his hip with one hand – and motioning to the sideline with the other… ‘It’s too low, the rim is a 1/4 inch too low'”, Kobe said to Henderson.
The Bobcats maintenance crew would promptly come onto the court and adjusted the rim. This story is a testament to Bryant’s perceptive abilities on the court, as something like this could skip the eyes of many players.
Earlier this season, we saw Luka Doncic (a player Kobe Bryant enjoyed watching) figure out that the rim was crooked in a game against the Philadelphia 76ers. Doncic drilled in a three as he pointed the rim issues out to the officials, which caused an almost 45-minute delay as everyone tried to figure out how to straighten the rim, with Boban Marjanovic getting involved as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcJNzIJx1YE
Stories about Bryant prove that ‘the Black Mamba’ is immortal and will never be forgotten by anyone in the NBA fraternity. Ability and determination will always be admired and idolized by basketball players, future, current, or former.
