LA Lakers Kobe Bryant (L) shoots against Boston Celtics Paul Pierce (34) and Kevin Garnett (R) during Game 1 of the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California in Los Angeles, California on June 3, 2010. AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK (Photo credit should read ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Kobe Bryant won five NBA Championships and is current fourth on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. While many know the Black Mamba’s accolades, the Los Angeles Lakers icon’s work ethic was also legendary.
During a recent conversation on the Scoop B Radio Podcast, former Lakers scout Adam Filippi, who is now a scout for the Sacramento Kings detailed how dedicated Bryant was.
In fact he shared how Bryant once showed up to the Lakers’ facility at 4 AM and put in work.
Check out a snippet from our Q&A below:
Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson: And you said you had a story…
Adam Filippi: Well one of the things that just drove me completely nuts is because I am obsessed with shooting. I am obsessed with my own workouts and stuff like this…I was living in Europe at the time because I was mainly doing global scouting and I’d come to the States about 3 or 4 times a year. Long story short, when I would come from Europe to Los Angeles it’s a long flight I was super jetlagged, I would wake up at about 4 o’clock in the morning. So what would I do? I would go to the gym. We would stay in the hotel across from the facility and go to the gym and get some shots up. It was a great opportunity to get into a NBA facility and get some shots up. So I remember one time I get in there, it was probably about 5:30 in the morning I get in there, security’s there but nobody else and I go get a ball and I can hear in the weight room a cla-cling or whatever, some movement and I peek in there, and it’s Kobe. It’s not even 6 a.m. and drenched in sweat. I asked him, “What time did you get here man?” He says, 4 o’clock, four-thirty. So he had already went through an hour and a half of weights and conditioning. He is the one player in the world that I ever met that can coach himself whether if it was physical training or skills training. He could train himself. Everybody else in the world needs someone to tell them what to do and also to correct them. He was so disciplined he knew how to correct himself. You know long story short, after watching him in the weight room and now he gets on the court and it may have been later in the day or something, but he asked me to rebound for him, and then he asked me to guard him a little bit in the mid-post which was part of his game and for me it was just an honor to be on the court with him but to see his discipline like he would spend 15 minutes on the same exact shot. And then once he was done with that and he would know when he was done with it, I wasn’t gonna tell him for sure, then he would do the reverse pivot. So he would go reverse pivot to his right and then he would do a reverse pivot to his left. Then he would do a front pivot to his right and then a front pivot to his left. So he had his whole routine, all his counters, counters to the counters that he would actually practice. 1 on zero with a certain discipline every day and that’s how he perfected his offensive game. I’ve never seen a player so polished. Footwork standpoint and again it was because of his discipline and perseverance.