Getting advice from living legend Kobe Bryant is something that young players would love to receive, but Kobe got some sage advice from perhaps one of the most unlikely sources for a basketball player. He got some advice he's always used from the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson.
He had a talk with the master dancer and basketball enthusiast in his teens and there were pretty awesome words of wisdom.
"I was starting to get flack for being an introvert and being so serious all the time about the game. And he wanted to call and give me encouragement and say, 'Don't change for them. You have to stay focused. If you wanna be one of the all-time greats you have to study the all-time greats. You have to be obsessive about what you do and how you do it.'"
Kobe has clearly taken some of that to heart with how much film he studies of his opponents and guys like Michael Jordan. And he definitely does whatever he wants whenever he wants and for whatever reason he wants. This came from an interview during a filming for HBO's Real Sports.
Kobe Bryant wrote a remembrance of the King of Pop in Time magazine after Jackson's death in 2009, and later said to Yahoo that Jackson served as a mentor to him teaching him about the importance of single-minded focus on greatness.
[h/t SI.com]
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