One of the highlights of Los Angeles Lakers’ legend Kobe Bryant’s career is leading USA Basketball to a gold medal during the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Kobe led a stacked roster dubbed the “Redeem Team” that looked to avenge USA Basketball’s third-place finish in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Bryant was coming off an MVP campaign an NBA Finals appearance, so he was highly motivated to bring home the gold.
Michael Redd got a firsthand account of what it was like to team up with Bryant and he recounted how the Lakers star took it upon himself to bond with his teammates, via his personal X account:
“I’m teaching Kobe how to play dominoes on the plane for a number of hours and me, Tayshaun [Prince] and Kobe are playing, Chris Bosh as well…we sat next to each other a lot on the plane and me and Tayshuan were like let’s just play dominoes whatever and so Kobe’s like let me learn. One thing about him was he was very curious about life and very curious about different things and he had never played dominoes. And so I’m teaching him how to play dominoes the way it was taught to me. Shoutout to Gary Payton who really elevated my domino game. And obviously we took advantage of him because one of the rare times you could take advantage of him at something.
“Beyond the dominoes aspect of things, I think Kobe was trying and was doing a great job of ingratiating himself with us.”‘OK, Mike’s my guy, Tay’s my guy, these are my guys how do I ingratiate himself with my teammates?’ And he was masterful at that. He did a great job of coming out of his shell. It was a fun time and all of us just had a certain bond at that point and it all culminated with gold medal.”
Bryant always found methods to lead in his own way, and it sounds like he took it upon himself to build connections with his teammates like Redd. Kobe had a certain knack for challenging teammates, such as how he and Sasha Vujacic used to go to war during practices and this story seems to fall in line with his personality.
Tyronn Lue tells 1-on-1 story with Kobe Bryant
Tyronn Lue is another former NBA player who has several stories about Kobe Bryant. Recently, Lue told a story about playing 1-on-1 against Bryant and how he was never able to beat him.
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