It’s amazing to think that the best basketball player in the world, a few months after winning his 4th NBA championship, during his summer vacation calls up Hakeem Olajuwon and fly’s all all the way to Houston just to work out with the guy for 2 hours. Talking about dedication to the game!
Kobe kindly told Hakeem that he was the greatest post man ever to play the game, and that he wanted to learn some techniques from him. Hakeem said that in only 2 hours Kobe was able to take in everything that Hakeem wanted him to learn, then they parted ways. Here is some video on them working out together:
Some of my thoughts on this…
- It’s incredible that as complex as Hakeem’s post game was, that Kobe Bryant was able to pick it up in a few short hours. If you can remember when Hakeem played, his moves varied. He had many in his arsenal.
- What pro athlete do you hear of, especially one of Kobe’ s magnitude has the humility to call up a former great and ask him for help? Who else has done that?
- I don’t think anyone, even Kobe haters have questioned Kobe Bryant’s commitment to the game of basketball. But it’s not only that his commitment is great. It’s that his commitment far outweights the rest of the league’s.
- This makes you wonder what else is up his sleeve. What else could Kobe have added to his game while we were not watching? Did he really take 2 months off of basketball? Or is he just fooling us.
- Will Phil and the coaching staff give Kobe more opportunities in the triangle to work from the low post? Of course they are going to try and feed the ball into Pau and Andrew as much as they can. But when push comes to shove, I think Kobe is still their best post player.
