“Kobe Bryant Was a Gym Rat at 19”: Tracy McGrady Revealed ‘Eat, Sleep, Basketball’ Mantra of Lakers Star, Which Inspired Him to Succeed

There is no replacement for hard work, and nobody understood it better than Kobe Bean Bryant. For the basketball community, hard work means Mamba Mentality.

It took Bryant 20 years to make people understand what he actually meant by Mamba Mentality. But at merely 19 years of age, he was mature enough to instill that in himself.

Tracy McGrady, who was one of Bryant’s greatest rivals on the court and friends off it, revealed how inspirational the 5x NBA champ was to him since the beginning.

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Tracy McGrady got inspiration from a 19-year-old Kobe Bryant

In an interview with former DPOY and 5x NBA Champ, Michael Cooper, T-Mac talked briefly about his whole basketball career. And when Cooper asked him about the Lakers’ 18-time All-Star, he went to lengths to describe him.

“Inspirational,” McGrady started. “Kob and I became really good friends in my rookie year. I stayed with him and his family in the summer after my rookie year, and we became really close friends. Just to be in his presence and learn and pick up some gems from him.”

T-Mac then went on to talk about Kobe’s work ethic at 19 and said, “he was a gym rat, eat, sleep, basketball, that was his life at 19 years old. I never met a kid so confident at that age and really believed that he was the greatest player in the world at 19 years old. Just the killer mentality man, anything that was in his way, he just wanted to destroy it, and to be around him and catch on to those things early on really helped me in my career.”

Also read: Tracy McGrady Eclipsed Michael Jordan and LeBron James In NBA Christmas Day Games With Multiple 40-Point Games

Bryant’s work ethic made him great

There are a lot of things that need to align for one to become great. But in that, hard work is the most necessary ingredient that has no replacement whatsoever.

And drawing inspiration from somebody like Michael Jordan, Kobe had to become one of the greatest considering the fact that how obsessed he was, first to be like Mike and then to be better than him.

Kobe’s hard work and determination knew no boundaries. He just didn’t embody Jordan’s style of playing the game, he literally followed every bit of how MJ went about his professional life and did most things even better than him.

Also read: Shaquille O’Neal, After Leading Kobe Bryant and Lakers to 3 NBA Championships, Needed Dwyane Wade’s Help to Beat Them on 2004 Christmas Day