Los Angeles Lakers icon Kobe Bryant did not win five NBA championships by accident. He mastered the fundamentals, the triangle offense, the opposing team’s plays and coaching tendencies. Bryant was a dedicated basketball scholar who spent countless hours analyzing the game.
Player psychology
Apart from the obvious to the trained basketball eye, he also studied player contracts and how they could affect an individual’s mindset. Bryant admitted that the Lakers sometimes based their defensive schemes on player deals, both finalized and pending.
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“There would be certain teams that had just signed a player to a max contract,” Bryant explained. “Then the supporting player who was up for free agency, whom they hadn’t signed yet.
“I’m saying, ‘Ok. This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to double-team the guy that hasn’t gotten a max contract yet. We’re not gonna let him get a shot off. Then we’re gonna single-cover the guy that has the max contract and then watch the guy that doesn’t have a max contract b—h and complain about not getting the ball all night long and just watch them divide each other,'” he added.
While basketball is a team game that requires cooperation from every player, one or several players would inevitably try to stand out from the rest of the pack. The NBA is a professional league after all, and there’s a lot of money involved.
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Kobe understood that most NBA players believe they need the ball in their hands to succeed and be noticed. The game has plenty of other aspects apart from scoring, but ballers put a premium on scoring since the best offensive player on a team usually gets paid the most.
Bryant tapped into this tendency and tried to exploit it. He knew that attacking an opponent from within is one of the most effective combat strategies ever.
Too smart
According to former teammate Devean George, Bryant knew the offensive and defensive schemes teams liked to use against him and devised a series of counters. He also knew exactly how to shoot over double teams and relentlessly manipulated the defense.
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George perfectly described how Kobe was simply head and shoulders above everyone else.
“His IQ and his brain just got more. But his mentality, he’s always had that… He just got smarter and smarter, and he started understanding. He started playing it really, the old cliché; he was playing chess while everybody else was playing checkers,” George explained.
Most fans know Kobe as a premier scorer who could drop 50 points on any given night. They were familiar with his fadeaway jumpers, game-winning mid-rangers, ferocious slams and crazy shots. However, Bryant was still able to score with seeming ease through sheer repetition and knowledge of the game’s nuances.
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Kobe wasn’t just an ordinary basketball player but rather an individual built for combat. The 2008 NBA MVP looked beyond the physical aspect and the Xs and Os of the game. This endless curiosity and insatiable hunger for success propelled him to all those championships and individual accolades.
The devil is in the details, as they say. Kobe looked at the game at the most microscopic level, hoping to find an edge. And most of the time, Bryant did.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 23, 2025, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.