I will never forget that day
because it's the day after my birthday.
Good morning, everybody.
Here is a live look over Long Beach
and we love to observe the weather from down here.
We are looking at a pretty gloomy morning
across the Southland.
Some of the effect from this cold front moving through
will be winds picking up to 55 mph.
This is in effect for the mountain communities
of Ventura and Los Angeles County.
Pretty breezy to even gusty conditions
into this afternoon.
I was training kids...
And my phone was blowing up.
I could feel it in my pocket but I wasn't answering it
because I'm in the middle of training.
And I reached in my pocket
and I'm thinking it's a Sunday, what's going on?
One of the other guys who was training with us,
his phone was on ringer.
So it kept, like, going off.
So I reached in and I started getting text messages.
I get a text from one of my friends
that lived in L.A.
And they said did you hear about Kobe?
I'm like, nah, what are you talking about?
I don't know what that meant.
Did I hear what about Kobe?
One of the kids comes into the gym and says, "Kobe's dead."
He died and I'm like... I'm like, what?
My wife came over and she said...
"I don't believe it,
but somebody said Kobe Bryant just died."
The buzz started going around about Kobe Bryant.
I was like, I don't think that's real.
I thought I thought there was misinformation.
And I said, "Whatever."
Wind picking up to 55 miles an hours.
Pretty breezy to even gusty conditions
They said Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash.
That's when I knew.
That's when I was like, "Okay."
Because the people who knew Kobe
knew he traveled around L.A. in a helicopter.
I just-- I stopped everything I was doing
and I just sat in the chair
and I just couldn't move.
The world shut down.
The world was grieving.
No, I cried for like three days, four days.
They just kept on showing it on the on the news.
It's a weird energy.
We have grown men crying in the streets.
He wasn't just the Laker.
He-- he represented us.
He wasn't just a Laker.
He was L.A.
He was a hero, a role model.
When I say all this, to be honest with you,
I feel nothing but love, everyone.
When I heard Kobe died I cried.
I turned into that picture
where he and I are embracing each other
and it just didn't seem real.
And the way he died, it just...
It's just-- it's just one of those things
you would never forget.
And you still keep asking yourself, why?
Was it avoidable?
Why did we lose our prince in such a tragic way?
♪ See a million people cry ♪
♪ Wipe them tears off them eyes ♪
♪ There will be a golden sky ♪
-♪ Couple thugs passing by ♪ -♪ Kobe ♪
♪ See a million people cry at my funeral ♪
♪ Nobody keep my spirit alive at my funeral ♪
♪ There will be a golden sky at my funeral ♪
♪ Couple thugs passing by at my funeral ♪
♪ See a million people cry at my funeral ♪
♪ Wipin' them tears off of their eyes at my funeral ♪
♪ There will be a golden sky at my funeral ♪
♪ Couple thugs passing by at my funeral ♪
♪ The whole world is watching live at my funeral ♪
♪ Nobody keep my spirit alive at my funeral ♪
♪ There will be a golden sky at my funeral ♪
♪ Couple thugs passing by at my funeral ♪
♪ Kobe ♪
The first time I heard of Kobe Bryant
was about 1995, '96,
Someone said you know, there's a kid
that's playing high school ball
in the Philadelphia area.
And I thought, okay, whatever. I mean, you know,
they're these high school kids, they're all great, you know.
And he says no, no, no, Chuck,
this guy is gonna be really, really good.
His name is Kobe Bryant.
I said okay.
He said, his dad played in the NBA,
Joe "Jellybean" Bryant is Kobe Bryant's dad.
I just think he was able to pass on just great knowledge to him.
It was something that was transferred.
He told me the whole story about
him being overseas playing basketball,
watching his dad being in the army, having to go from,
you know, base to base and stuff like that
and it was just, it was unique, man.
He didn't want to be what everybody else was,
the typical player that came into the NBA.
Everybody has this same, you know, like sob story
coming from struggle type story
they do come from poverty, you know,
mindset poverty situations where
they want to get out "the hood" per se.
Well then another year passed
and all of a sudden people are talking about Kobe Bryant
coming out straight from high school to the pros.
You know, he had an opportunity to play with
the best players in the world at a very young age.
But I thought, okay, are we talking about a lottery player?
We're talking about a midrange first round pick
and they said, no, Chuck, this guy could be going
high in the draft and the rest is history,
Well, him going straight into the NBA from high school.
I mean, I would have the same thing
if I was good enough to do it.
Jerry West, then the general manager of the Lakers
brought him in for a workout
and as soon as he saw Kobe Bryant
go after players on the Lakers, guys like Michael Cooper
an established star defensive talent in the N.B.A,
Jerry West said, I've seen enough.
I gotta have Kobe Bryant.
I have got to have Kobe Bryant.
So now the agent aren't telling us
saying, okay, I got, I got to get Kobe to the Lakers
with the agent and with Jerry West,
Kobe Bryant's a Laker.
The Lakers organization
is just so traditional.
They've been there from the beginning, man,
and they just had so many
huge memories within the N.B.A.
We're number one.
Purple and gold is...
it is a representation of something that's bigger
than the city of L.A. as a culture.
It also represents the N.B.A.
Like when people think N.B.A,
first two teams that come to mind:
Lakers, Celtics, period.
But funny enough, man, when I got to L.A, I--
I really didn't know...
it sounds stupid, but I really didn't know that, like,
the Lakers were that big--
that big of a team because
I've never been to the West Coast before, man.
It was just an unbelievable experience for me, man,
just going out there,
The caliber of organization and then what that embodies,
Lakers is about championships, right?
They're not thinking about regular season,
they're not thinking about nothing else
until April to June that's it.
I was so interested in having a high school kid
go straight to the pros.
I mean, Kevin Garnett had done it
and other players, of course,
preceded Kobe Bryant from high school.
Some successful, some not, it's a tough jump.
We're talking about a young person, 18 years young,
and they may have all the athletic skills,
but their playing against men,
men that have had college experience,
a number of years in the N.B.A,
that are physically big.
Yeah. As a player I did play against Kobe.
I remember his rookie year.
Uh, he was actually guarding me and I wasn't a marquee player
So I guess the coach put him on me and,
you know, right out of high school
and he was long, lanky and thin
and we actually called a play, called a turn four back to back
and I posted him up and I scored on him.
But this is the thing, I remember...
he was playing his defense so hard
and I remember after I scored the second basket,
I kind of turned and said to him,
"Young fella, you're gonna be just fine.
Like, I'm supposed to score on you, I'm a grown man.
You're 19, you're 18,
I'm supposed to score, I outweigh you by 50 pounds.
But he was trying so hard
and he actually had a plan and knew what he was trying to do
and knew what he was trying to accomplish.
You knew after him-- watching him play
and play against him his rookie year,
you knew he was gonna be good.
And you can tell because he had that...
I don't know if I can say this, if I could use profanity,
but he had that fuck you attitude
and the great ones do.
They would take him out the game, say something to him.
But when they put him back in the game, he would try it again.
And that's the thing I love when he tried something in the game
and it didn't work,
the next day at practice he was working on it.
And, see, as a coach, that's when you know you got something.
Well, you can't do anything to change the cards,
but you got to play your hand right, right?
Phil Jackson was a Hall of Fame coach
even before he received the Lakers offer.
What he did with the Bulls,
with Michael Jordan speaks for itself.
I grew up watching the great Chicago Bulls win championships.
And who was the coach of those teams?
Phil Jackson.
And Phil Jackson knew how to coach,
he knew how to coach superstars.
He knew how to coach average players,
and he knew how to coach rookies.
When I learned from Phil was
how to handle different personalities,
How he handled different personalities,
I got to see that every day.
At the end of the day it's about
can you get a group of young men,
get them all on the same page,
get them all single-minded to achieve one goal.
All coaches gravitate to players that want to be great,
that work hard,
See, when you get to the gym
and the player's in the gym, already sweating,
when you get there at seven o'clock in the morning,
you know you got something.
Everybody say they want to be successful.
No, they don't, everybody don't want to be successful.
What do you mean?
Are you getting up early, putting extra work in?
What are you doing to be successful other than this...
Flapping your gums, talking.
Every year you ask players,
who want to win the championship, raise your hand.
Everybody do this. Then you start saying,
What sacrifices are you willing to make?
This guy is literally working while people are sleeping
like-- like, does he sleep like, is he a vampire?
Is he-- is he mixed with something else?
Is he hybrid? Like, what's going on with this guy?
Like, this is Kobe, like,
all these crazy stories that talk about his work ethic.
I got the chance to experience that for two years.
I showed up to the training facility at 6:30 AM to get rehab
and Kobe Bryant was in the gym by himself
shooting in the dark.
So he's like, "Meet me in the gym."
I'm like, "What time?" He was like, "Five o'clock."
Something like-- All right, cool.
Every time I saw Kobe it was either leaving
or coming from a gym
or we were going to a restaurant, one of the two,
and if we were leaving a restaurant,
he was going right back to the gym.
That's just what it was with Kobe.
I think Kobe was great about getting his teammates
to be better.
Already had a work ethic, but his work ethic
was astronomical compared to anybody's that I've ever seen.
I wanted to be around him as much as I could.
I have the greatest respect for people that make the sacrifice.
People don't understand the time it takes
to just be a good NBA player.
What do you think it takes to be great?
See, people, he got talent,
everybody in the NBA got talent.
Kobe didn't jump higher than everybody in the N.B.A.
Kobe wasn't the greatest, best shooter in NBA.
He wasn't the best ball handler.
He wasn't, but because of the work,
but I'll tell you what he was,
he was probably the greatest worker.
I wanted to be a sports commentator
since I was five years young.
My favorite sport was basketball.
I love the game.
I love the fact that chemistry is so important in the sport
On the floor, you've got five players
and they not only have to pass the ball
and be unselfish, they have to move without the basketball
and it's a thing of beauty.
Right now as I'm delivering this message to you,
I'm seeing Kobe Bryant with the Lakers with Shaquille O'Neal.
It was beautiful basketball to see the two of them
destroy opponents in sync together...
checking their egos at the door
and making sure their team rose to the occasion
and won a basketball game.
That's the beauty and the essence of the sport
where you can play for the team
and the name on your chest, Lakers,
instead of the back of the jersey
with your individual name.
And that's what Kobe and Shaq did.
When they won those championships
back to back to back,
I'm thinking, okay, this is rigged,
you know, this is-- something's going on here.
And the only thing that I can compare it to
is back when Michael Jordan played
when they won their first three
and then Mike took off and then they came back
and then they won the second three.
So I'm thinking, okay, something's with this--
with this type of player,
comparing him to Michael Jordan back then.
Well, I felt very fortunate that in a short amount of time
I went from...
a little snotty nose kid from North Carolina
to a role model and to a lot of people.
Who was Kobe following? Um...
Who did he have as a role model?
Which player was Kobe most influenced by?
Michael Jordan.
This is what was funny,
I remember about his 3rd, 4th year in the league.
The joke was in the locker rooms Kobe walked by,
look at him, he want to be like Michael Jordan.
Look at him, he talked like Michael Jordan.
Look at him, he stick his tongue out like Michael Jordan.
And I'll never forget this. I'm in the locker room one day,
Some of the guys in the locker room
hating on Kobe, he wanna be like Mike.
I stopped him. I turned the tv on mute,
And this is what I said,
and I hope I can say this and excuse me,
I want to apologize in advance but it pisses me off.
Show you how people think.
I said, you guys are a bunch of stupid motherfuckers
And they said, "Why?"
Y'all are sitting in the room laughing at a player
who wants to be like Michael Jordan.
Let that sink in.
Y'all are laughing now.
It's not that he's-- just wants to be like him,
he's working his ass off in the gym.
While you're laughing, he's in the gym,
trying to be as good, if not better,
than the guy that we think is the greatest, Michael Jordan.
And you idiots are laughing.
What you should be doing
is picking somebody like him, who's great,
and getting your ass out this locker room
and get in the gym and start working on your game
and start mimicking that guy.
Who's stupid, the guy that's trying to be like the--
the guy that's trying to be like the greatest?
Or the guys that sit around here too afraid to try to be great?
If I had to pick what player right now represents the future
it would have to be Kobe Bryant
with the way that he plays the game of basketball.
I have high regards in terms of how he focused on the game.
He works on his basketball skills.
Each and every year he gets better.
I think Michael Jordan passed off the torch to Kobe.
He handed him the keys and said, "Hey...
This is your NBA now.
Do with it what I did and go further."
It was a Sunday night, we're in Los Angeles.
Just another great day to be in L.A.
Downtown Los Angeles, you're looking at the basketball...
I remember that Laker ball club
average, maybe a little above average, not much...
Kobe Bryant was playing with guys like Lamar Odom,
Kwame Brown, Smush Parker, Chris Mihm.
So you could tell that if the Lakers
were gonna win a ballgame, they relied on Kobe Bryant.
I just remember...
Phil was, he just kept saying, we have to win this game,
we have to win this game.
So you know, everybody's kind of doing
what they do before the games.
You know, some people eating fruit
and some people on their phones trying to figure out
tickets for their family and stuff like that.
I just remember Kobe was sitting in his locker,
quiet, just sitting there the whole time quiet,
I'm like, hm...
I'm just watching, you know, I'm a rookie. I'm like...
kind of watching everything that he's doing
to get prepared for the game.
You know, Phil comes in a lot of times.
We watched like, um, film before the game
just to go over like some of their sets and stuff like that.
And he's quiet, not saying nothing.
He's just sitting there and then he just
comes in the middle and is like...
let's go, you know what I mean?
So we break off, we run out the tunnel.
Going into the Staples Arena,
it's kind of a surreal kind of atmosphere.
You know, they black out all the seats around
and then the only thing lit up in the court is the court.
So going into that game,
you know Kobe is going to do something special.
You know, he's gonna score a lot of points, but...
you don't know exactly how many points
or what he's gonna do.
And the buzz is going around the NBA,
Kobe's on a tear.
That's what, that's all you hear, Kobe's on a tear.
He's scoring 45, he's scoring 50.
So, you know coming into that game,
something's going to happen.
And there's Sam Mitchell,
the head coach of the Raptors.
When you're playing against a great player and a great team,
like Kobe Bryant and Lakers...
you don't have to get your teams necessarily ready to play.
They're gonna be ready.
Look, when we played against good teams and great players,
I never-- I slept like a baby. Why?
I knew our players were gonna be ready to play
'cause if they wasn't we were gonna get beat
we were gonna get embarrassed.
You think our players go relax
the night before playing Kobe Bryant
and the Lake-- and the Lakers?
What do you do?
How do we get Kobe to not score 40 points?
It's almost impossible but it's doable.
We were winning the game.
That's the thing that people don't understand.
We had never beat the Lakers in L.A.
I mean we were winning the game,
we were winning the game the majority of the game.
So we are ready to rock and roll here,
at the Staples with Raptors and the Lakers.
Lakers won in Toronto on December the 7th, 102-91,
Wide open and a three is good.
Oh, Peterson Matt Bonner comes up
and scores for the Raptors
and another three, Mike James, and for the...
ice play by Charlie VillanuevaN and the Raptors now six...
And the team that I was coaching, we wasn't very good.
I think we won, like, 29 games that year.
We wasn't that good
and we had a chance to beat the Lakers in L.A.
Man, we were playing like shit, man.
It was crazy, like, we played terrible that game.
I'm looking and I'm like, okay, that's an open shot.
You gotta make that.
Smush Parker with a questionable shot.
Oh, we missed again.
Oh, gosh what are you doing, Smush?
I almost forgot we were up, like, by 20,
We were killing the Lakers in L.A.
And he was the only one doing anything.
Kobe Bryant weaving inside,
working on Jalen Rose.
He has 14 in the quarter, but his team trails.
Solid job by the Raptors on the road here
at the Staples Center, 36-29.
Think about this,
every night, Kobe Bryant got your best
the other team's best.
Every night, when you're playing against Kobe,
you know, if you don't bring your best, he can get 81.
Every night you play
somebody trying to kick your butt
because you're Kobe Bryant.
So you gotta bring your A-game, mentally, and physically.
That's why we respect and love
and appreciate those guys so much.
You know how hard it is,
somebody coming at you with their best?
Every night. They went to bed early,
they ate right, they got their rest,
they went over their notes,
they got their self ready.
What would you do if you were preparing
to play against Kobe Bryant?
I would give everything.
Thank you. So he got that every--
now think about this, 82 nights in the playoffs.
That's what he got every night.
That's why he had to have that mamba mentality.
He had to take his mind to a place
that no one else could go
because every night you took your mind--
every night when I played against a great player,
I took my mind to a place that I could very rarely go
because you got my best every night,
every time I play against a great guy.
Bryant has not seen action
here in the second quarter.
You know, he's always gonna be in kill mode.
But you can tell sometimes
that he has a different switch because it's personal.
It's like he loved challenges that will make him rise above.
Like he gonna rise to the occasion every time.
I mean he's a pretty serious, like for the most part,
like when he's locked in for games
like doing what he does,
but when he goes and just stops talking
it's like, all right, he's on something else tonight.
So that that would be like how you know he's gonna go
and do something crazy and be on another level.
So anybody that challenges Kobe, he loved it.
He loved people that don't back down to him.
We have a time out
for the Lakers, 44-32, Raptors on the road.
So I'm on the bench, I'm watching the game.
He comes out, he hits the three.
Pow! Crowd goes crazy.
Everybody get in he drops the three.
How about that? Kobe Bryant, back into the game.
Played a whopping nine minutes during that game.
During those nine minutes it just felt like I was running...
back and forth, back and forth.
We're running past each other on defense and offense
and I said, "Go ahead. Do you boy," just like that.
Kobe didn't have the greatest three point percentage
and that wasn't the greatest part of his game.
But we knew that if he came out
and he was hitting threes in the beginning,
it is gonna be hard to guard him
because you got to guard him from so far out, right?
And the Raptors go into the locker room
leading 63-49 at the break,
shooting, uh, towards 62%
and a chorus of boos coming from the Laker crowd
here, Chuck, as both teams exit the floor.
We're losing, 'til we get to halftime.
So we get to halftime, you know, we come in, and...
once again, he's sitting there in the locker, quiet,
This is privy information,
nobody knows this.
So Phil Jackson has two sets of offenses.
Okay, so we run a certain offense in the first half
that we don't run in the second half.
If the offense is getting to you know get Kobe the ball.
So Mamba was always mobbed in the second half of any game.
Quiet locker room, halftime, Phil comes in.
You know, once again we're breaking down film.
He's yelling at everybody.
"Guys, we gotta win this game, we gotta win this game."
And he was kind of loud, that--
during that-- during that time.
We're still down.
So it's like...
what are we gonna do?
How are we gonna dig ourselves out of this?
They come back out, like I said, quiet...
Didn't say one word the whole time.
We come back out...
Third quarter.
Never seen nothing like this in my-- in my life.
He goes bananas,
We were leading, you know, we were up
and then next thing you know, something happened.
A switch happened.
Like, a switch in his head
and somebody probably ticked him off
and said something to him or something.
And I'm thinking, I don't think there was anything
that we did or said that triggered him.
I have no clue.
But next thing you know, Kobe just unleashes
the terror on us, and it was...
it was a sight to see.
It was impressive, to say the least
Kobe Bryant now at 32.
And the opportunity is there.
Kobe again for three. 71-55, Raptors.
So he comes out, hit the three, boom,
comes back down another time.
Another three.
Boom, right?
So we're like, oh, my God,
we were like bumping each other, like.
Everybody's yelling from the bench,
"Give it to B, give it to B,"
You know, we called him "B" like, you know.
"Give it to B," like--
So dudes just literally, just coming down
like just passing to him,
He going like one on four, one on five.
I'm like, this is crazy man, like.
You couldn't do anything.
As hard as you tried, you couldn't do anything.
You got Bryant with a pull up three.
You got to be kidding me. He has 41
A good time out here by Sam Mitchell, Chuck.
You do not want to get this crowd back into the game.
75-65, Raptors.
He had that look in his eye.
"I'm gonna score a lot of points
"and you're not gonna be able to do too much about it."
Kobe Bryant feeling it with 47 points.
I'm just shaking my head because I'm playing it over my head
and that's all you could do was just, wow.
You know, what is this guy doing?
We play the zone.
We played a box-and-one.
He gets another touch,
Peterson playing with three fouls,
Bryant double pump, forced it up...
We played a triangle-and-two.
We played every defense,
we played defenses that we had never practiced,
that I had played in college.
We did-- I tried to do everything I thought of
to slow him down.
The majority of the game,
we just wanted to try to get the ball out of his hand.
We wanted to send a body or have a presence
so he would pass it to the other guys on the team,
so they would score.
My biggest thing with great players like Kobe,
I was a firm believer in denying them the ball,
trying not to let them catch it.
Do your dirty work early.
All you could do is try to take him off his spots
and make him work.
But you were really at his mercy.
He just kept attacking
The great ones, you gotta hope they have an off night.
You're not gonna stop the great ones.
No one stopped Michael.
No one stopped Larry Bird.
Nothing worked.
The single covers, the double covers,
the triple covers that we threw at Kobe.
Were throwing bodies at him.
We're double teaming and we're triple team him,
he's still scoring and he's making the and ones,
he's making all of his free throws,
he's making all of his threes.
He was shooting over 50, 60%
from the field goal and the three point line.
And I'm just looking at him like, "What the?"
You know, but I had to keep my cool and composure
'cause we were trying to win the game.
And at the end of the third quarter,
it's been all L.A., all Kobe Bryant.
91-85 with crowd on their feet.
I think it kind of made Kobe hot
because he was saying, "Okay,
"you're gonna send double and triple team at me.
"I'm just not gonna pass the ball."
And I said this to Kobe. If we would have won the game
and you would have had the 81 points,
they would have called you selfish.
You know, I think for him, more so than anything,
it was about proving everybody wrong.
That he could carry a team by himself,
a team that wasn't stacked with, you know, all these superstars.
So, I think that for him, this season was, you know,
he was very motivated by-- by that point
of like, "I can carry anybody," you know?
He told me he just didn't want to lose that game
and he thought that he could win it by himself if he had to.
Man, he put on his cape.
He put on his cape
and he carried us throughout that game, man.
When he-- when he gets into his, uh, his "mamba" zone,
like he looks at me.
And you-- I know that he's--
he's-- he's-- he's ready to attack.
You know that means get him the ball and get out of his way.
When you think about mamba mentality,
if you go into the history on the snake,
you know, it's just a deadly person.
Keep coming, keep pursuing.
Don't give up, don't give in.
Find a way. That was what Kobe was about.
I'm gonna keep knocking on that door
until I find a way to get in.
Toughness, mental toughness.
I'm gonna break you.
I'm gonna get right inside you and make you pay
for being on the NBA floor trying to guard me.
Drive determination, fearlessness, aggression.
Slither and get angles and get his angles
and then attack like a mamba and explode to the rim.
I just feel like he's just straight killer.
K-I-L-L-E-R.
Just a killer.
And that's what mamba mentality means to me.
It's having an extreme will to win
in anything that you're doing.
Anything that you're doing.
Just having a will to win in life
Literally, like whether that's being a husband or wife,
father or mother, journalist, a teacher,
janitor, police officer,
whatever it is that you're doing,
whatever is a part of your lifestyle,
you approach that in such a way where the attention to detail,
making sure you're performing at a high level,
no excuses, showing up every day, doing the work,
working your ass off, all of that...
in my definition is the mamba mentality
We want the people that are gonna go the extra mile
to be the best you could be in life.
He made me realize that I was thinking too small.
He wanted to be the best player in the world.
I just wanted to make the NBA.
So that alone, we just know what type of person he was
because he lead by example.
So, we had to watch what he did to kinda see his leadership.
How hard he played, you know, the preparation,
the dedication, how hard he practiced.
You know, every day in practice,
it was that mentality.
Him staying late.
You know him getting there at five a.m. in the morning.
Him doing everything that he needed to do
in order to put the best Kobe Bryant on the court.
If he looked at us and we weren't ready, he'd tell you.
And that's why people said,
"I want to be around Kobe Bryant."
You know, you have no choice but to fall in line.
That's what the great superstars, that's what they do.
He's just like, "Shawne, man, I'm telling you,
"you just gotta play hard as you can.
"You just gotta play hardest."
But I'm so frustrated, but I'm saying in my head,
I'm like, "God damn, I am playing hard as I can,
"so what do you think I can do," you know?
Like what is the next level of this?
I was just saying in my head, I was like,
"If I ain't playing hard enough for Kobe like shit,
"I think I might retire," 'cause shit, I'm playing--
I don't have nothing left out here.
I'm giving my all.
So many kids look up to him because of who he was.
They wanted to be Kobe Bryant.
I wanted to be Kobe Bryant.
Another story.
We had a strict diet um, at the Lakers.
So they had this-- this big diet team.
I don't know if they were from Germany, something.
They was-- they was from a soccer club.
They were spending a ton of money on this.
They was trying to get everybody to be on grass fed--
grass fed beef, um, pure organic stuff.
But you gotta understand, we was losing.
So every day, when we come in,
they'll bring us into the meeting room,
we're sitting there
and I probably shouldn't be tell you this,
but they'll bring us in the meeting room
and we'll be sitting there,
and they'd be talking-- talking to us about food
and Kobe said, um, he just raised his hand,
he said, "Listen, um, do y'all have the study on this?
"Do you have the facts on this? Who did the study?
"When was this study conducted?" He just stand up.
He was like, "Because I don't give a... about no eating.
"We just lost four games in a row
"and y'all in here talking about what they're gonna eat?
"To hell with that."
He was like, "I want the study, I want the study.
"Is this facts, proven facts?"
It's like, he just challenged our nutritionist.
He just challenged her
and challenged him all the way to the bone
to where they had to come in with a pack of papers
to prove to him this stuff is facts, this is a study,
but he still didn't want to hear it
because we had lost four games in a row.
He feels like there's bigger things out here.
Even though he wasn't playing,
there's bigger things there to be talking about than food.
They need to be in the gym.
There's gotta be an obsessive nature to it.
So, when you talk about Mike Tyson, obsessive, right?
Just crazy. Like the way his mind works,
the way he approached boxing.
Michael Jackson, right?
Still another great iconic person,
great in his field. Same thing.
Same thing with Mike, same thing with Kobe.
It's just the way they operate is so different
Amongst everybody else
and they set the tone coming in from the start.
It's definitely been, um, some broken cameras after the game
and some things misplaced here and there.
Some-- some cuss words said.
I had to tell him and I had to-- I had to beg him,
Be like, "Yo, pass the ball dude."
And he always thought that him shooting over three guys
was a better chance of making it than somebody else shooting.
Me and Kobe started to butt heads a little bit.
Um, you know, if-- if--
if you want me to be completely honest and candid right now,
I didn't feel Kobe honestly was giving respect to me
or his teammates.
So, I told the story a long time ago
that I stopped passing Kobe the ball.
I wasn't forcing Kobe the ball. Let me clarify.
You know, Phil Jackson in the beginning of the season,
I remember Phil Jackson in the beginning of the first season
that I was there told-- told everybody in the locker room,
"Kobe is going to get his shots.
"Don't force him the ball if the defense is denying him the ball,
"that's where we get our most turnovers."
You know, guys, you know, going like this pumping, pumping,
trying to get him the ball, they force a pass and it's a steal.
Uh, so for me, I go like this, I look at Kobe
and if he was denied, I go this way.
It's not that I didn't pass him the ball,
I just wasn't forcing it to Kobe.
So he felt, I was looking him off and you know,
that's the reason why I didn't start my second season,
You know, Kobe Bryant was the face of the organization.
You know, so if he's unhappy,
they're gonna try to find a way to make him happy
and that's all that was.
You know, he-- he was, he's the greatest, one of the greatest.
I'm just a pawn.
It made me feel a way when he passed away.
I didn't expect for it to hit me the way it did.
But when I heard of his passing,
like it-- it hit-- It rocked me to my core.
Like I couldn't walk, My legs gave out, I was shaking.
Um, and I didn't know why, but you know,
as I was thinking about, it's because at the end of the day,
we developed a bond
A brotherhood.
We went out there every night, you know,
82 games for two seasons straight.
We were teammates, even though we might have did this,
we were still like this and uh, you know,
it bothered me that he and I didn't get a chance to talk,
you know, to one another, um.
You know, we're not the smartest in-- in our 20s.
Here I am in my 40s and I still make mistakes,
but I realized that in my 20s, like I was--
I made a lot of them.
He has the reputation of being an asshole.
I love it because again,
guys at that level have to have a arrogance and cockiness
and the competitiveness about themselves
because they demand greatness.
So, it's a Sunday night game
and the Raptors are up big.
They're up by nearly 20 points
and then Kobe took over.
Came away with a steal at mid court.
Went to the rim, dunked and the place started to ignite.
And all of a sudden,
you look at Kobe Bryant the box score.
He's got 25, he's got 32, he's got 41 and I'm thinking,
"what are we seeing here?"
So Kobe Bryant's around the 46, 48 point mark.
And I'm thinking to myself, "Wow."
And I turned to my color analyst, Leo Rautins.
I said, Leo, "I think he's probably gonna get 65+ tonight."
And boy, was I wrong.
Everyone knew at Staples, he was going to get the ball.
They sent Mike James, Chris Bosh,
Matt Bonner Mo Peterson, Jalen Rose.
They sent everyone at Kobe Bryant
and Kobe just sliced them up.
Man, when I tell you it was just like bucket
after bucket after bucket after bucket.
Bryant is just like looking at me like, "Welcome to school."
You know, we didn't know how big it was gonna be
as far as like his point total
but we knew it was gonna be something special.
Here's Bryant.
And Kobe was going everywhere.
He was going to the rim on dunks.
He was doing pull up threes,
He was doing fadeaway jumpers from 18 feet.
He was going to the foul line.
Everyone in the arena and the Toronto Raptors knew
that he was going to get the ball
and we still couldn't stop him.
"Kobe is-- Did he just make that shot?
"Okay, let's get him the ball again.
"Dang, that was a tough shot."
And there was one shot that I remember,
he caught it about 38 feet out near the hash mark.
The shot clock was going down.
Kobe right into the lane.
What am I watching here?
Well, we're gonna have a timeout here.
Okay. Yeah. He's-- he's on a different level right now.
I mean, I'm watching perhaps
the greatest individual game I've ever seen.
So, this is L.A., right?
You got celebrities and stuff like that.
Rick Fox is sitting on the other side,
right opposite of the bench.
And he's like baiting him to do certain things and then,
you know, Kobe won't shoot that three, right?
And he would pull up and shoot it. Bam, knock it down.
and he's like, "What? Right there, right there?
Like, you know, so it became like this little chess game
that was going on within the game.
It was a game within the game.
You had Lakers and the Raptors, I get that.
But then inside the game, it became Kobe Bryant
and once Kobe started getting past 55 to 60 points,
Kobe Bryant became the-- the game.
His world inside that game started to grow
and grow and grow.
He has 79 points.
It really superseded anything over what we were seeing
with the Raptors and the Lakers
because all the attention was on Kobe Bryant
and how many points he was gonna end up with?
He's got 79 points and the crowd is just going crazy.
He goes to line.
That was close. How much pressure do you want?
I'm going for 80.
This crowd is on their feet.
wanting to be together-- There it is.
Remarkable. Outstanding. Spectacular.
Chuck, did you ever think you'd see a player
in any one of our games put up 80 points. 81.
If somebody told me we'd be in the house tonight
watching Kobe Bryant with 81.
I can't believe what I just saw.
And now, Bryant's run out the game.
An NBA player scored 81 points.
You wanna show your teammate love.
Everybody understood after the game
how classic of a moment that was.
I think Kobe was loved and respected by so many people
because they appreciated the effort every night.
He tried to be great every night.
He understood what the game was about.
Yeah, it was about the competition,
it was about winning,
but he understood he had a responsibility to show up
and try to be great for the fans every night.
There are some people save their money
to get to go to one game.
One game and Kobe felt like, "Hey, man.
"I wanted that person to come to see me live for the first
"and maybe the only time
"I wanted them to leave there with something special."
He felt that responsibility.
When somebody with their hard earned money,
puts that money into a ticket for himself,
for a family member, for a next door neighbor,
to say, "I want to see Kobe Bryant play."
Wow, it doesn't get any better than that.
Look, man. What do you say Wilt Chamberlain score 101 points?
You shake his hand and say he's great.
What do you say when Kobe Bryant scores 81?
You shake his hand and you say it's great.
Did it hurt?
Yeah, because everyone's still talking about,
"Hey, you're the team that gave up 81 to Kobe Bryant."
I must have heard that for a good two to four weeks.
Coach Mitchell, Sam Mitchell.
We get into the locker room and it was just silence.
It was just quiet 'cause we're still all kind of stunned.
Like Kobe just scored 81.
Then the coaches come in like they normally do,
like any other thing and then they're-- they're mad.
For me, it was disappointing.
but like I said, it was Kobe Bryant.
But you can't blame the vets, you can't blame Jalen,
you can't blame Mo, you can't blame Mike James,
you can't blame any of the older guys
because they knew it was coming.
The coaches knew it was coming. Who do you put the blame on?
So guess who got the majority of the blame?
Me and the younger guys.
Jose Calderon, Charlie Villanueva, the rookies.
So, it was a learning experience from us.
It was a bad one, but you couldn't blame anybody else.
That's just kinda how it went at that time.
You put the blame and you chalk it up, you move on.
But at that point on, now, you're in the history books,
It's written. What do you do?
Here's the thing.
It's easy to look back now at that game
and say, "We should have doubled Kobe Bryant."
They did everything they could in a sense,
whether it was a box-and-one, whether they trapped him.
We did double Kobe Bryant. We played zone.
we played box-and-one, we played triangle too.
And at a certain point, I don't want to say to the journalists,
"Do y'all know what you're looking at?"
But we did all those things.
I did everything that I knew to do humanly possible to beat him
and to stop him and to win the game.
And he did everything humanly possible
in the-- in the God given talent within the rules of the game
to not let us do that.
And that night, he was the better man.
What's wrong with that?
I was on teams that won a lot of games.
Those were the nights, we were just a better team.
That's what sports about.
That's what you love about it.
If you remember, there was a short brief time
where he flirted with going to Phoenix.
I never thought that was gonna happen.
When you walk into the Staples Center,
you see the names.
Kareem, Magic, all those great players
and then you see the banners.
You see the crowd.
Jack, Denzel.
Where you gonna go? Where you gonna go?
Kobe Bryant was a Los Angeles Laker.
He was the franchise period.
But I mean, you're talking about 20 years
that he gave the one organization.
I mean, that's a hell of a career.
It's still kind of bewilders me.
We didn't know why he retired.
I think-- I think that he had officially given the game
everything that he could, is my opinion on why he retired.
You look at the court, it's like your stage.
So for him, that was his standing ovation moment.
You take that time, you sub somebody out
so they can-- So we can give them their flowers
while they're still alive, right?
So, that's their moment where, you know,
it's like they get their encore, you know what I'm saying?
So um, yeah, to all the viewers,
understand it's nothing different than being an actor.
Once it's over, you stand up
and you give that person an ovation.
So Kobe Bryant is retiring
and this is his swan song at NBA arenas.
And everyone would acknowledge Kobe Bryant
with a video tribute to his great career.
And I saw Kobe and he recognized me.
I said a few words to him. He came back and he said,
"Hey, thanks for everything."
And that's the last words he spoke to me.
"Thanks for everything."
When he played his last game and I coached
and he played his last game, after the game,
I just want to hug him and just tell him I love him
and just tell him, "Man, it's been a pleasure
"to play against you and to watch you play."
And to say that I played and coached in the era
that you participated in because it was a great era.
I got a chance to witness
and play against one of the greatest players of all time.
He was one of my favorite players.
I thanked him for being
everything that an NBA player is supposed to be.
And I hugged him.
It's brief moments every day
that I still can't believe that Kobe Bryant's not with us.
You know, when you're grieving about certain people,
a lot of times what I like to do is, like,
let me take a step back and what would that person want?
I could hear them in my mind like,
"You better not be fucking crying you little bitch."
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I can hear that.
I can hear him say that, you know?
That's not what he would want.
There's a lot left with Kobe that might take years and years
to get to and I'm sure everybody has tons of stories,
tons of things that they can get to.
You know, he had grew into such a wonderful human being.
He seemed like he was happy.
That's the thing, like, he finally, like,
"I done found my happiness," you know what I mean?
"I'm happy."
And that's the hardest thing to do for a player
of his stature, for 20 years, to be in that limelight,
to walk away from that and still find peace, right?
And he found his peace. He was happy.
I'm gonna-- I'm just one of those type of people
that I love and respect greatness.
I love being in the company of greatness.
I love being around people that are higher achievers,
that-- that don't understand what the word "quit" means.
Love being around people like that.
That's how you grow and that's how you learn.
Like, what makes you feel like
you can still achieve that?
Even though everyone has told you no,
even though you don't really know how to do it,
how do you figure out how to get from point A to B
when you don't have a route?
And that's the thing. And so, if I could choose
one day to be with him, I would choose to be with him
that morning and try to talk him out of taking the helicopter.