Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant continues to inspire athletes all around the world, and that includes Chicago Bears rookie Caleb Williams.
As the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft, Williams has a lot of pressure on him to turn around a Bears franchise that hasn’t won a Super Bowl since 1985.
Bryant faced similar pressure when being drafted by the Lakers out of high school and was able to deliver five championships in his 20-year Hall of Fame career.
And as Williams gets set to embark on his own journey, he spoke with Maria Taylor of NBC about how he regularly watched Bryant’s ‘Muse’ documentary o get inspiration on the football field:
“I watch the Kobe Mamba documentary at least once every year… But I watch it once every year, I started that in college. My freshman year, I was laying in my bed and first time I watched it and I loved it so much that I have in my notes, the Kobe documentary and I have like time stamps and then next to it I have like a time stamp of this and that and the time stamp says his mentality, another time stamp says when he went through adversity and hardship and how he dealt with it, things like that. So watching him, watching how he played, how fierce he was, how much he wanted to win and loved to win. I feel as I connect with those things the most from him. So that’s a person that I admire and look to for some of the mentality, some of the grit, adversity and how he dealt with it and even when I got hurt in my championship game in college, I use what he said. ‘The game is bigger than anything I’m feeling.’ So yeah, I would say that I watch a lot of Kobe.”
Williams has all of the talent in the world so if he has a worth ethic to match, then he will be a legend in his sport similar to Bryant.
After playing two years at USC, Williams is well-aware of the impact that Bryant had on the city of L.A. and is likely looking to do something similar in another big city of Chicago.
Bears rookie Rome Odunze also inspired by Kobe Bryant
Caleb Williams isn’t the only Bears rookie that channels Kobe Bryant as wide receiver Rome Odunze also recently discussed how he does the same.
“[NBA legend] Kobe [ Bryant ] said he never took a shot in a game that he didn’t take a thousand times in practice,” Odunze relayed to a group of teens. “It’s the same way in football. You should never catch a ball in a game that you ain’t caught a thousand times in practice.”
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