End of an Era: A Conversation With NBA Great Kobe Bryant

good morning everyone this is Jim Gray welcome to the Milken Institute everyone is here to see this man the one and only

kobe

bryant

kobe

thank you for joining us thank you for having me how has your first week of retirement? It's been good. He's been good, you know? I wish I could say I've been relaxing, but I have, but it's been fun. You walk away with a 60-point game and we had a chance to talk right after the game. Very few people can leave like this. but it makes you go back in your brain maybe i can still do this maybe i'm leaving a little too soon instead of a little too soon i might but you know i consider myself very lucky that i didn't stop playing the game because i felt like i couldn't anymore play at a certain level you know I stopped playing because I just didn't want to do it anymore you know it's just because after 20 years what hit you you know I'm just I think it's just part of evolution you know I felt like I had the urge to move on to something else and my passion and focus started to shift to what's next instead of being completely obsessed with the game itself so I had that inner comfort of walking away from the game nothing to do with scoring 60 or 50 or whatever.

The case may be that it was completely irrelevant to me if I had a better team in the last few years when it made a real difference when it makes a difference six seven eight nine or whatever my man it wouldn't matter because I know when I made the announcement I took the decision and I kept going around with how you know and I kept thinking well I want this to be the last year but we'll see what happens at the end of the season it's ok we'll see what happens if I get into a contending team we win but the reality is we don't You can make this kind of decision based on external circumstances, right?

This has to be a decision that comes from within either you want to play or you don't want to play and the question once I answer that question was very easy let's go back to the beginning I remember when you came to the league and I remember you playing in the guts on the spectrum as a very young kid and then seeing you at lower merion high school and then you got to the nba and you were with the hornets for like 20 seconds and then you became a laker what were your expectations of yourself and your goal when you got there to the league?

God it's hard to remember that long yes I remember being extremely excited but also extremely focused because there was a lot of talk about whether I was making the right decision or not there were a lot of people saying I was going to be a failure so I remember my concentration she was extremely tall and didn't have even a day to really enjoy it or celebrate it when she was back in the gym and working so hard because she felt the stakes were high. Was it her goal to be the best basketball player on the planet?

It was yes, did they make it? Well, it's funny like they're kids. They know he was growing up and saying he wanted to be the best ever to play well and then as you get older you start to understand that there really isn't a real answer to that. right and I found a lot of comfort once I realized that my goal really is to be the best player that I can be and then what that means that it means to help my teammates to be the best players that they can be and once I i noticed then my game went to another lovely, when did you realize that and how did you find out? what was the transformation? trial and error was a process i mean you keep banging your head against a wall you know eventually you'll try to find the door and the key you know and that's what i had to do and it was a lot of research for years a lot of reading was a lot of studying was A lot of listening and trying to really figure out what it is that makes people take and how you motivate your peers is one thing Say do this do that but how do you really motivate them to the point where they feel like they're the ones doing that? they ask the questions about how to improve themselves, like how do you flip the switch to help someone flip the switch within themselves to want? to reach your full potential and that's really the dance so you're banging your head against this wall at this door you're saying at the time you were stubborn i'm stubborn now i mean you know i'm a little less stubborn stubborn with a

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er sense for perspective how about that when they came to you with questions how did you know how to motivate and who you could push and who you weren't that also trial and error yes it is and it was but for him for the most part you know what he had to do to improve.

I was just listening, just listen. You just have to listen and really understand it and it's hard in professional sports because like if you watch a game, you watch the team warmup, you'll see players that most players are really locked in internally like they're locked into their own situation, do you? You know? his routine is right and what I started to do is I started to step back and instead of working on this shot, that shot before a game, I started looking at, you know what Powell is doing, what Lamar is doing and it was deficient or you can see that you know what his temperament is to listen, listen and also observe and take all that into account, so what is it like to be you?

I mean very few people. I mean michael jordan wayne gretzky joe montana tiger woods they're in tom brady they're at the pinnacle and you can walk around with this moniker of the best basketball player on the planet the best anything on the planet you don't really have a moment to yourself it's impossible to have a

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with you anytime unless we're sitting at your house cause there's a crush everyone wants your time so I wonder how you handle that and what it's like to walk like you well you know it's huh you know there's that aspect, but there is also the appearance. where you really have a chance to make it, a lot of people have come up to you on the street to shake your hand, they want to talk about being in the eighty-one point game or the 60 point game, there you have the chance to do a lot of happy people it's easy to see the negative side of those things but i think the positive far outweighed and they used to suffer because you were so myopic tunnel vision and and wanting to achieve your goals um suffering no friends these are not your words friends, not mine here a lot of this irony matt you know it's obviously you have friends oh i know you made them but you know what i mean i know what you're laughing at they have a friend it takes time you gotta have it . an investment sure sure yeah it's uh thes It's choices like i made a conscious decision to go after my passion obsessively it's a conscious decision so it's not like you know i missed that i missed that no i made the choice consciously missing out on those things because i'd rather be here it's more about the sacrifice i guess that's the question but that's my point it's not a sacrifice to me it's ok i'm saying it's not a second like this is my choice how i prefer to do this yeah you put a you know both ice cream in front of the kid and a plate of broccoli kids probably need ice pain so to me the game is ice cream to some people on the outside all this hard work looks like broccoli all it's perspective, you had a lot of ice cream in a different way a lot of ice cream how much you hate the lack of hard work and despise laziness it drives me crazy I don't understand but but you know at the same time it was a talk with my children so I know hard work and stuff and I say honey you can be the line and you can be the gazelle nature needs both so you have to have hardworking people you have to have lazy people way to see it's the balance of all things so how much would you rather be the lion if you want to be the gazelle darling the fastest gazelle in the world you know how the children take that

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I'll be the lion if I ask my girl it's fine so when you saw that you couldn't motivate others and they were lazy or they did not put out the same effort that you had and expected from them, how did you respond well?

I grew up in Phil Phil's office and Mitch's office and we had a good salary cap conversation about how we can move these players and get him out of here package them up and get them out to be the GM well no but I was the I was listening at the end of the day and the race said and it's over you know I'd be damned if I don't lose if I lose these championships because I'm playing with a bunch of slackers this ain't happening right so you also don't know this train is going one way or another and you're going to be in it you're going to be out of it you're going to be under it it's just what it is is what it is so if you know that I like to motivate players to be better I don't want to have to motivate you to go to the gym in the first place is not the motivation to get a gym in the first place you are probably probably playing basketball because it was easy for you or any other reason that is not your true calling that is not your true passion maybe it was something else and you know I just want to help you find it somewhere else so I would like to do you a favor how would you describe yourself? as an extremely selfless teammate since you've just seen me helping them what can I do man congratulations. yeah you have to balance those things so you know every teammate responds differently Just as you know POW responds differently.

You have to be able to push the power needle. POW. He understands a little when I put your arm around and talk to them. equally and it's about listening, you have to be able to listen to the guys and understand who they are as people, what their journey has been to get to this point and they are from there, you can make decisions in the moment how you respond to certain situations with them, how did you do that with Shaq? Well, with Shaq it was interesting with Shaq. I had to challenge that all the time, all the time.

Mark could be, you know Mark is full of energy all the time and like we were dating back to back and Phil Nevers gave us days off, we show up to practice and Mark just runs in the cabin and just you. I know Shaq is just trying not to get hurt at this point and you k now I'd just go feel and say Phil hey put me on second team so we put me on second team and I'm playing with Mark and all I know need just one can just sit Shaq you're not the most dominant center ever you're not going to be the best player on the team so that's it and all of a sudden it's trash talk all day you know the physique the physique of practice goes to another level and you know poor love and he's like demolished poor he's going to have to pay, but that's how you allow yourself to be serious, right?

Oh that's joking in the level but you were there were various upkeeps but you can't you really can't you can't talk trash to say things that just aren't realistic you know what I say I gotta be like I'm going to play there was a game in utah doing a tiebreaker mmm back in the day and i'm in i'm getting the jump ball out like the fourth quarter and a fan yells behind me says kobe you're trash that's her i said dude be more creative say something that's k and something realistic i might like to prick myself a bit so what's best? he, you know, drives everyone else crazy, but um when 2005 2006 would give you you can't win without Shaq, okay, I didn't get an answer since I had to bite my time, but I remember that fan was in Sacramento.

I do it right behind. the scorer's table with the cowbell after 2009 I came back and said hey I see you yeah and there's someone we see here in the front row that I want to acknowledge I want to thank you for making things better for all of us that's the commissioner David Stern, they know it's um, I grew up, you know, when I grew up abroad, gaming wasn't as global then as it is now, so my grandfather used to record all the gameplay, send me all the games, you know, but which I don't even know if you know, but the biggest impact it had on me was the NBA Entertainment Division because all the videos they used to put out the story of the game, the golden degrees, back-to-back videos to come fly with me: Larry legends and also if i used to sit at home and digest this stuff. them and just so you know I learned a lot about the game from those videos and obviously what he's done for the game is so international it's unbelievable.

Let's go back to Shaq for a moment. Did it work in terms of motivation and did you get more out of it or just because this Gulf got so wide that it couldn't coexist now that we were smart enough to understand what we were doing for each other as if we knew we needed each other? each other to be successful and the tension we had between them created an environment of brutal honesty brutal honesty my teammates felt I wasn't passing the ball to him I didn't see it they would say it if they felt Shaq was completely out of shape I would say it , and that seeped through an entire organization where this brutal honesty in pursuit of the goal of winning a championship was what we stood for, so from the outside you see this tension, you see this friction, but internally we understand that this hurts us. it's leading to this place so it works fine so what caused the final fracture? that I couldn't win without him once I saw that he was fine, we're done, yeah, we'll see because you know it's that I felt like I had a lot more there and I wasn't going towithdraw not knowing if I could have fulfilled what you wanted to do on your own now you look back and say that it was good that I did it or you feel somewhat regretful or melancholic that maybe if you had stayed with you I would have had even more no , I'm happy I was five because I'm okay with that and how are you all today fantastic because I'm five he's four so we're all good I don't mean we see each other we catch up all the time you know you asked me about my kids they asked about him and he's a

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guy mm-hmm during that period though things weren't easy there was also a Gulf and a problem with his trainer Phil Jackson who I know he has the utmost respect for but there was a time when that and i'll just say what you told me you'd like to strangle this guy look oh no question no question but looking back now what i wish i could have done differently is structure some tip or trade deal we're selling all these fucking books about me at least let me get a royalty now you can have your own book to tell the truth are you going to do that no oh i have other things to do but when he wrote those things i think a lot of people think professional athletes don't have feelings and that's why when something is written or said about you It just goes well and maybe it does with certain cyclists and certain people, but when it's your coach it has to hurt and hurt.

How did you react to that? things and just refocus them correctly so I didn't lag, right? I used those things to help me get up at 4 am. to me so no matter what is said the apposition would be negative when you have the point of view that no matter what is said it will do nothing but fuel my passion then you really do nothing that no one can say, that will really set you back. I mean, because you just use it, I want to amplify that as well, and in doing so, let's take a look at the commercial for the symphony.

It took me too long to stop. Don't you want to be free? Mahe was getting stronger as you became a habit which is brilliant was your idea um the Corbett yeah so once we sat down I got the idea what the villainous hero of that cinema represents an idea which originated from Kobe ink then it became very easy to spread that stuff out to our various partners you know IGN sold out of fear but the idea starts with us at the core of what the villain hero is and then to from that day will be created explain the hero villain hero villain is a simple philosophy that you take how you defy channel the villain to unleash the hero how to use darkness to create greatness that's the premise so why do you think you they booed particularly that night in Philly and we did the interview together at the all-star game and you played great and you're from Philly and the booing is coming? as we do this interview and as you finish the game and it pushed me back and it's not you yeah what are you thinking as this is going on and you wonder why not that's hard?

I mean you. they feel like b Elieve in Santa Claus before seriously literally um so no I mean it is but you're still young and impressionable at the time or at least you know not not with the travel hardened warrior I know, but that urge was still there. negative experiences and using it was always there, so once I had that, once I accepted it, I just used it, used it, there was a role model that you followed, maybe Ollie or someone you've seen in these kinds of circumstances, um not one in particular, but I used to read a lot and watch a lot about people who have done phenomenal things.

I've created cool stuff and then I try to ask how they did it and then why and what was their journey, you know? what is their process and not so much as the actual execution details of how you create X Y & Z but it's more the inner journey they go through and from that I was able to learn a lot myself but was always still now I mean reading a lot and learning much like what kind of books what kind of material people do you know the journey people go through what internal conversation they have the internal monologue how you how each of us navigate through our own insecurities all moments of doubt and then when you have those doubts you understand where those doubts come from in the first place you know and I believe that once you understand that and you can really create whatever you want it's just a matter of first how to navigate the journey of self and once you have that you can fall into any industry and you can figure it out we see you as a really confident guy you'll take every last shot you'll go out and take 50 shots what self-doubt you have internally it's not that you never h e doubted such a strange thing i mean is that you know there will be times you will succeed there are times you will fail so waste time doubting if you will succeed and not the least point is you only put one foot in front of the other you control what you can't control and then you see what the right outcome is if you did well you'll have to wake up the next day and take the trip all over again if you lose it sucks but you have to wake up the next day and take the trip again new anyway, so there's no point in sitting here and debating or having doubts, understand each other, train as hard as you can and go out there. and you let it flow how much the losses bothered you well they bother me but then i was able to let him go big losses championship losses pistons 2004 yes you let him go what i did is i learned from him you know very specific things like against the pistons we didn't execute well enough enough to beat the Detroit Pistons.

I'm going to be a basketball techie or whatever, but I can't help it, so if you watch the series, the Pistons put pressure all over the court, which forced us. stretch our offense to stretch the triangle offense you really have to be sharp like you have to understand what are the option sequences that are cold enough to run 94 feet and we weren't ready to do that you know if you watch the series you compare to Larry Brown in Philly when we played in 2001 and he tried to apply the same pressure and we beat him because that team was extremely well prepared to execute that and he pointed fingers at me and I put my teammates in those correct positions from day one. one so that we would be ready for that in case that happened you are a perfectionist for better or worse if your experience was also a happy occasion or you became like many people who touch perfection can never really take full advantage of it no one can so you went tortured from the ride no whoa im realist im real im pro realist about it its pretty good you get it and you know perfection can never be a team but it sure is a lot of fun trying to achieve but some of you our brothers, in fact, the people you are close with make you so crazy that you cannot function.

Tiger Woods, you know, an incredible 15-year run and domineering like we've never seen, but it was totally sad, every step was a struggle that gets tough. I mean, how did you know how to become realistic as a perfectionist? Well because you know I know perfection isn't a real thing like there are some people when we interact incredibly competitive about everything so you know if you come up to me and say hey let's go play ping pong and you know there's a bet five bucks in this game of ping pong now i watch you play and you're better than me i'm fine i'm not going to fly i can't beat you why how am i going to do that?

Michael Michael and I had this conversation recently so it's ok not in your retirement you can come with me and play golf it's not ok so you'll have to play golf yes now with you although it's a good plan since college . like you want to take me out there just kill me like you don't, I'm not a golfer I'm not going to play. I'm a realist, so take us inside what your conversations with Michael would be because you are one in two. He looks like a big brother from the second time I played him until 1998 and I asked him.

I had a couple of questions and he gave me some very detailed answers and said "hey I'll send you my number if you need anything just call and to this day Colin for anything call me back and we'll have a lot of info." deep conversations he will share whatever he has learned throughout his career and is he a leader or knows how to scare the cows off screens and has been a fantastic mentor leadership is an interesting question how did you know when to lead and when ? to be passive ok i can get from the given give a very weird answer to that just stick with me for a second so my wife and i went on vacation after the 2000 and 2008 finals we lost southeast and we are on vacation. in France and we were walking and what was real and beautiful to me was how beautiful everything was how beautiful nature was the flower the trees everything was beautiful and my mind began to think well I noticed the beauty of these things there in the elements but these things can't be beautiful without the sun but yet i'm not sitting here and saying wow the sun is so beautiful so i'm appreciating its own independent beauty and in the same way the sun also knows when to disappear, too much of the Sun is dangerous, right?

That helped me understand how to lead my team correctly, so when you go back in 2009 and you see the Lakers play and now you see Lamar Odom play and you go wow, he's great because Kobe is there. Kobe is improving it, right? playing and appreciating Lamar Odom in his own right Powell in his own right, so as the leader in practice, you're there, you're helping them grow, but you also have to know when they're going well and let them grow. themselves and that walk helped me change my perspective on how I approach reading so you were still learning and that's 12 years into the journey distillers no we're not yes still learning no so when you backtracked and people would say it isn't. directing i just thought they were really stupid people ok but you read that yeah you would watch yeah and obviously you read and watched a lot more than you ever indicated wrote and watched no i don't know really , I just understood you.

I know I comment on a broadcast many times. It's like very superficial information. They are things that are very easy to digest. the key is not passing the ball the key is how do you motivate them to stay in the gym for an hour after practicing shooting and taking shots so that when they get the ball they are ready to take it down you know that's making people bet So what? How do you make them want to be the best version of themselves? That's making someone really better. So what we say or what the media wrote bothered you?

No, I found it funny, so that's how you are. as a source of motivation for me, it was always like the icing on the cake. I can poke them once in a while and they would be wrong, but I never really got motivated. If I needed it, I would use it. but it wasn't something that pushed me day in and day out to explain what it's like to focus and have that vision or maybe even a little broader than the vision of what it takes to win well it's um you know you watch Game film and you study what the team does well but they don't do it well what they like to execute when they like to execute it strengths weaknesses yadda yadda yadda and then from that you make your plan and then you go out and try to execute that plan and now after you have that plan you should also have a backup because you have to count on them to make the adjustments right so if they make the adjustments I have to be able to go to POW and you know to be prepared you have to go to politics okay they did this as we thought they were going to do as we talked about now let's go to this right so it's just homework.

I don't have to be lying about imagining or being creative to be creative. Sit back, watch, get ready, and the answers are literally right in front of you. the time to sit back and watch what it's like to win all you cared about was at the beginning, but after that, after a while and particularly after 2008, it became about bringing out the best in others and I'm playing with that became my mission and funny things once it happened we started winning so i think i know your greatness is in your future it's not in the rear view mirror of what you've done on the basketball court how you gonna apply everything you did you are what you're and you've gotten to this point now in kobe ink and you're looking for the basketball life well i mean the hardest part has been trying to figure out what comes next you know it terrifies me 20 21 years looking at athletes us we've retired and we don't really have anything to go to try to figure it out, I can retire and then you're like, okay, I have to figure things out and I didn't want you to know, so at the age of 20 and 21 I really started to read a lot and in try to like what i like to do and you know i was lucky but unfortunately i have to have these injuries you know with your killer i used to shoulder and knee i say lucky because it gave me a lot of time to think gave me a lot of time to sit gave me a lot of time to say man my career could be over right now and all this work you've done trying to figure out what comes next you're not ready by the way i didn't want that so i kept thinking about asking the wrong question what's thebiggest industry i can get into which industry i can get into i can get in that has the wrong question most positive and then i started asking what do you like to do what do you like to do the most I love telling stories I love it I've been I love it love it love it and that's what I decided to do so you want to tell stories now with your own story which was Muse which was on Showtime which was a fantastic documentary and if you haven't seen it I recommend you get it on demand or go to Showtime comm that was your first start were you satisfied with that effort? you have to entertain and educate are endless i mean literally story is the seed of everything it's a seed of everything none of us would be sitting in this room right now without the power of story because somewhere along of the lines either you read a story heard a story that inspired you and let you know that that dream to achieve what you have achieved so i believe that story story can seriously change the world literally and I'm extremely fascinated by that and even beyond that storytelling through sports what it looks like you sit there and I'm sure many of us have many of you have kids at home who play sports you put your kids to bed you read to them a book what sports book are you going to do read them that touches the fantasy that touches the imagination that adds mythology to it there are no stories like that and I am very, very, very, very excited to bring that to the world, how are you doing with that?

Oh great, I mean, it's a long time you've been doing this plus basketball, it's just not a one week event now or two weeks, oh, oh, you know, it's fun like the day of the last game after the game. I have a lot of questions about how that day went. you know and I work We got up, we took the kids to school, we went to the office, we sat there and we wrote stories, we edited stories, so four, four 4:30 4:30 I went home changed I went to the game I can cup the next morning I went back to the office I guess it was It's not much different than what you've been doing aside from basketball the point is and I really want Ashley to understand that this is you really have to work hard to figure out what they are like things for some of us as we were born. and basketball was here as if he started playing basketball he knows that too, and for many of us that first phase is very easy, but it's really very difficult to find something else that you like as much or more, so good, and that's really the key. than keeping busy that you have to figure out what it is that you really want to do like get up in the morning and say yeah I'm excited to go do this what's that don't you realize everything will be alright?

You think you'll have that same passion because I do n Oh I mean I can't you know I'm very very very lucky to be able to sit here and say that like you know I love it here with you good friends but I have to be in the office writing stories right now. i sleep so much i enjoy well maybe that will change how many of you want to be in business with kobe

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raise your hand like i don't know after hearing some of these losers go home a lot of hands there kobe i think a lot of those people they have stories, maybe you tell their stories, I want to come back to a couple of other things here, the best player you've ever faced, we say Michael Jordan.

Michael was always right, of course, and now today, oh, I see, the hardest player I had to defend was Kevin Durant, he gave me the most problems because of his length and his versatility, he's the one I struggled the most tick. I remember when Julius Erving and you may have been at that game made that big dunk under the rim again Inst, the Lakers and the finals and the magic was there and Magic has a very famous quote afterwards, he says, "You know I really don't We knew what to do." I admire and like to watch and I was mesmerized while you were on the court and you were like, geez, I really just did that, there are a lot of players, maybe you know there are a lot of players who have done things during the game, whereas just a very good move , a very good move and I tell you it was a good move, but I'll be ready for that next time, but if you are, we are grateful that there is someone who makes you look like Steph Curry.

I mean it seems to have captured the imagination of the country and yes but did you know the point is there are so many great athletes and players out there like Steph Curry does that Westbrook does that and quietly to do that Damian Lillard I mean there are a lot of players that they'll just do something that's so phenomenal and make it look so easy that you have to appreciate it, so it's happened to me over and over the years. Do you have an eye for talent? Matt could tell if a player sucks pretty easily ok let's go back to when there were kids because he thought I'm a Thompson as a kid did you see Steph Curry as a kid did you see greatness in his future? one of the players there and it just kind of went unnoticed you know because you can see how the players are shooting you can see how you move, how you get past but what you can see is you can't see what's here you know you can you don't see the determination internal they have or their ability to navigate through their own emotions that you can't see.

You have to be close to a player. You have to see him go through things and you have to see how to handle it. channel those kinds of things so you know that part is too hard too hard to be so how has this last year been for you? we've seen the adulation we've seen it come full circle you've gone from someone who was cheered on as a real youngster coming out of a lower merion to being booed on being hated on by the villainous hero for five championships - now this outpouring that's been amazing how it's been receiving this has been an amazing feeling to have this year we know i can thank them and vice versa because they really pushed me to try to be the best version of myself and to have all those years we've had these rivalries and these heated confrontations leading up to this point where we can look at and greet each other.

It's been great. What did you expect? Did you think this would happen? your eyes were there someone or something in the road that touched me that doesn't go that far maybe the lights are just bright there was something that touched you though along the way yes the game in philadelphia really did it because they know i got here when I was a baby, I mean, and they remembered me when I was a baby and my coach was there, a lot of my high school teammates were there, friends from high school were there, so you know what to be In that environment it was very emotional for having been like the commercials. i suggested you hate me and i accept it and how being loved is a hard adjustment well yeah i mean you played the other one pretty good it worked out for you yeah i feel more comfortable with it especially when it comes to competition , But uh, yeah, it took a little bit of an adjustment.

It was a little awkward like this. Your family. You don't hate the easy parts. How does your family deal with having to share your father and husband with the world? No, they've been great. part of the process you know and it really happened in his last game when I scored 60 it was like wow dad! what was it that you don't know because they didn't know and they saw that you know so it felt good to take it? him down memory lane a little bit and say you know your dad used to be really really good i didn't have to go on youtube tonight no i don't have to go beat me up tonight so now you can see him live and in person yes that It was amazing you know I remember when John Madden retired he told me he retired because he wanted to spend more time with his family and he said he was home for about three weeks and his family decided they didn't want to spend any more time It's time you had a plan, if this doesn't go well home a bit you're used to traveling yes I can see how that could happen but no I know like I said I have a very clear purpose or what to do.

I have something to go to. I've been injured so I've been home most of the time anyway so I know the kids' schedules, I know when to pick them up, I know when it's to drop them off. I said the other I have I know those things and I know what time I have to be there and also the things so I'm a bit tamed by now you already sound like a man who is totally satisfied and totally comfortable with what you have achieved and where you are in life i feel i feel fantastic you know it's probably different if i didn't give it my all every day you know and then you regret it you regret it i think the key is really not to focus on the achievements but more so on the effort you put into trying to achieve those things because because at the end of the day you looked in a mirror so i gave it all i had you can be comfortable that's why i feel comfortable saying here today well you gave us all one more thrill a couple weeks ago so if we can queue up the tape let's take a look at how kobe bryant decided to say goodbye in los angeles toby got the last lakers job right free sports has sex 64 games history have you reviewed it before is this the first time you're watching this no i watched it and i was kind of nitpicky ok man i should have had some tea i look like in the certain balance you know one shot a 3 point i got to the end of the game going left it was like if there were no children in rooms you don't do this but like you ride a bike with your kid yes you ever played this game with your friends we have to throw a rock and try to hit like a telephone pole to get you to move like this. you have to return it well, if you throw it directly like this, you will not miss it. right, you have to throw it back and hit that shot.

I literally thought about being on the BMX bike and trying to hit one of those things seriously because you should look at the shot. I'm sliding to the left so I'm off balance. it's my laser tire so i had to pull back the follow up so i had to shoot it a bit to get it a chance to go in so it was a good inspiration in that game for quite a while how did you do with your team backhand and you scored that 17 points in a row and in a great fourth quarter and they got out of your way if that's the right term but you were exhausted how you did well because i know there's no tomorrow you know literally but literally i mean it's as if You know everything you have, you give it away, but now that I've made the decision to do it, I feel comfortable overcoming exhaustion. properly make sure you're taking your time l like it's coming back to light it's like the basics of the game how to handle screen roll we're double teams coming from all those little things it wasn't a championship but on an individual level it was possibly just as exciting um yeah I'm excited this is what the fans came to see you know I was like this it was time to say goodbye and you know I wanted to be able to say goodbye and I'm I called my wife before the game and I was like oh it feels It feels like everyone wants to be sad, you know I'm not sad like hopefully we can make tonight some kind of celebration where I can give him something where they're not thinking about the fact that this is my last game like they are." I'm just thinking of a great game to watch you know and luckily it worked out that way and how the car ride home that night with Vanessa and your kids was amazing but those free throws were fun po Because it was you who wanted ted 60 you knew everythingI mean, it would be so anticlimactic that I missed it, but when I compare that to the 81-point game and the free throw I made there, I remember taking a free throw for the 81-point game and look and see all the fans on their feet. and looking and then flipping that with this one on santa at the foul line all i saw was the back of the phones you know i had to refrain from smiling so this was like damn i'm old as hell last time this happened who was his eyeball and i was like the back of phones actually there crazy how i look at your phones when you was 81 you grew up in philadelphia in that arena you saw that picture every time you walked in on the wilting spectrum with a hundred yeah hershey pennsylvania think about it when you were 81 i thought about it later i thought about it later and i thought about all the times i was kidding i dreamed of scoring 100 points like i dreamed about it and i try to work it out in my brain like this is this is this logically it can be done right because if you scored 20 points first quarter now you're on fire second quarter you got 20 if you scored twenty one quarters you can't score 20 another right she scored 22 first score 22 second that it's a naive 40 point ok already and now you're rolling so at that point the moe just feeds on itself so now you come out the third quarter starts off good i got ten quick points suddenly there you're sitting that fifty with a lot of game to go ok and this is how i always processed that and figured it out to believe this is actually possible when you look back on that game do you think you should have had more like when you look?

Going back to your championship, you think more about the games you won and the titles you want or the couple that got away. I do both things. I do. done differently, you're better off because that's how you learn that you've got to be able to look at things and not justlike the last game was anything. I could watch the highlights just for pure entertainment, you know, and just do little criticism, but yeah, I'll let it slide. What do you want to do well? Back then it was like you had to watch those performances and criticize yourself for every little thing to learn from Kobe.

Congratulations. It has been a wonderful race. It has been an honor to have been able to cover you. I did the first interview you ever did. you allowed me do the last interview and you look like your uniform has been a privilege and thank you for everything you have given thanks I appreciate it