Kobe Bryant is one of the most successful and popular basketball players in the world. He started his career with the Lakers in 1996 and quickly became a fan favorite. Kobe has won five NBA championships, two Olympic gold medals, and is a three-time Finals MVP.
He is also a 17-time All-Star, 15-time member of the All-NBA team, and 12-time member of the All-Defensive team. In 2013, Kobe announced that he would be retiring from basketball at the end of the season.
Fans around the world are sad to see him go, but they will always remember his incredible accomplishments on the court. Kobe Bryant is a true legend in the sport of basketball.
1. “Dedication makes dreams come true.”
2. “Once you know what failure feels like, determination chases success.”
3. “The most important thing is you must put everybody on notice that you’re here and you are for real.”
4. “I see the beauty in getting up in the morning and being in pain because I know all the hard work that it took to get to this point. So, I’m not, I’m not sad about [retiring]. I’m very appreciative of what I’ve had.”
5. “After all, greatness is not for everybody.”
6. “I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.”
7. “May you always remember to enjoy the road, especially when it’s a hard one.”
8. “We psych ourselves up too much. Like if you try to talk yourself into, ‘Oh, this is a big moment, this is a big shot,’ you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself. You shot that shot hundreds and thousands of times. Just shoot another one.”
9. “There’s nothing truly to be afraid of, when you think about it, because I’ve failed before, and I woke up the next morning, and I’m OK.”
10. “People say bad things about you in the paper on Monday, and then on Wednesday, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. I’ve seen that cycle, so why would I be nervous about it happening?”
11. “There’s a big misconception where people thinking winning or success comes from everybody putting their arms around each other and singing kumbaya and patting them on the back when they mess up, and that’s just not reality. If you are going to be a leader, you are not going to please everybody. You have to hold people accountable. Even if you have that moment of being uncomfortable.”
12. “If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail.”
13. “The beauty of coaching is growing the players from the ground up. That journey continues.”
14. “Use your success, wealth, and influence to put them in the best position to realize their own dreams and find their true purpose.”
15. “I want to learn how to become the best basketball player in the world. And if I’m going to learn that, I gotta learn from the best. Kids go to school to be doctors or lawyers, so forth and so on and that’s where they study. My place to study is from the best.”
16. “A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord.”
17. “I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights when I show up at the arena and I’m like, ‘My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt. I don’t have it. I just want to chill.’ We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”
18. “Trust me, setting things up right from the beginning will avoid a ton of tears and heartache.”
19. “These young guys are playing checkers. I’m out there playing chess.”
20. “I want to see if I can. I don’t know if I can. I want to find out. I want to see. I’m going to do what I always do: I’m going to break it down to its smallest form, smallest detail, and go after it. Day by day, one day at a time.”
21. “I create my own path. It was straight and narrow. I looked at it this way: you were either in my way or out of it.”
22. “When I have the chance to guard Michael Jordan, I want to guard him. I want him. It’s the ultimate challenge.”
23. “A lot of people say they want to be great, but they’re not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve greatness.”
24. “It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.”
25. “From the beginning, I wanted to be the best. I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best.”
26. “My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.”
27. “I never needed any external forces to motivate me.”
28. “Pain doesn’t tell you when you ought to stop. Pain is the little voice in your head that tries to hold you back because it knows if you continue you will change.”
29. “Losing is losing. There aren’t different degrees of losing. You either win a championship or you’re s**t. It’s very black and white to me.”
30. “You guys know how I am. I don’t forget anything.”
31. “I saw you come in and I wanted you to know that it doesn’t matter how hard you work, that I’m willing to work harder than you.”
32. “I’m extremely willful to win, and I respond to challenges. It’s not a challenge to me to win the scoring title, because I know I can.”
33. “Leadership is lonely. I’m not going to be afraid of confrontation to get us to where we need to go.”
34. “The important thing is that your teammates have to know you’re pulling for them and you really want them to be successful.”
36. “I had to organize things. So I created the ‘Black Mamba.’ So Kobe has to deal with these issues, all the personal challenges. The Black Mamba steps on the court and does what he does. I’m destroying everybody that steps on the court.”
37. “Everything negative—pressure, challenges—is all an opportunity for me to rise.”
38. “I realized that intimidation didn’t really exist if you’re in the right frame of mind.”
39. “There’s no need to get too crazy or bent out of shape. There are still challenges every day. But I’m still having fun. I was born to play this game. I still love it.”
40. “This is the moment I accept the most challenging times will always be behind me and in front of me.”
41. “Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”
42. “When we are saying this cannot be accomplished, this cannot be done, then we are short-changing ourselves. My brain—it cannot process failure. It will not process failure. Because if I have to sit there and face myself and tell myself ‘You are a failure,’ I think that is almost worse than dying.”
43. “The moment you give up, is the moment you let someone else win.”
44. “The message was that if you want to win championships, you have to let people focus on what they do best while you focus on what you do best. For me, that was rebounding, running the floor, and blocking shots.”
45. “If I wanted to play, I’d still be playing for the Lakers.”
46. “The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great at whatever they want to do.”
47. “The last time I was intimidated was when I was six years old in karate class. I was an orange belt and the instructor ordered me to fight a black belt who was a couple years older and a lot bigger. I was scared s**tless. I mean, I was terrified and he kicked my a**. But then I realized he didn’t kick my a** as bad as I thought he was going to and that there was nothing really to be afraid of.”
48. “When you make a choice and say, ‘Come hell or high water, I am going to be this,’ then you should not be surprised when you are that. It should not be something that is intoxicating or out of character because you have seen this moment for so long that when that moment comes, of course it is here because it has been here the whole time, because it has been [in your mind] the whole time.”
49. “Be sad. Be mad. Be frustrated. Scream. Cry. Sulk. When you wake up you will think it was just a nightmare only to realize it’s all too real. You will be angry and wish for the day back, the game back, that play back. But reality gives nothing back and nor should you.”
50. “I’ve shot too much from the time I was eight years old. But ‘too much’ is a matter of perspective. Some people thought Mozart had too many notes in his compositions. Let me put it this way: I entertain people who say I shoot too much. I find it very interesting. Going back to Mozart, he responded to critics by saying there were neither too many notes or too few. There were as many as necessary.”
In this blog post, we’ve shared some of our favorite Kobe Bryant quotes on success. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do! What was your favorite Kobe Bryant quote? Let us know in the comments below.