Five-time NBA champion Kobe Bryant knows his basketball career is coming to an end. Although only two years potentially remain for Kobe on the court with the Los Angeles Lakers, the future Hall of Famer is already making plans for what he’ll do when his playing days are over.
Kobe intends to turn a new page once he’s retired from the NBA in an attempt to follow in the footsteps of other NBA greats like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. Both Magic and Jordan became captains of the industry after their playing careers were over and as a result, have become extremely successful in their off-the-court ventures.
The Lakers superstar wants to take the same route and has been picking the brains of people like Arianna Huffington, Oprah Winfrey, Jony Ive of Apple and Nike’s Mark Parker.
Kobe recently sat down with Bloomberg News to talk about his future and his intentions to become successful in the business world. Kobe said the following about reach out to Oprah and Huffington, transcription from Mark Medina of the L.A. Daily News:
“I just cold call people,” Bryant told Bloomberg News in the video above. “I cold call people and pick their brain about stuff. Some of the questions I ask seem really really simple and some of them seem stupid, quite honestly, for them. But if I don’t know, I don’t know. I have to ask. I’ll just do that and ask questions. I want to learn more about how they build their business and how they run their companies and how they see the world.”
Needless to say, Kobe appears determined to continue his success in the coming years while in unfamiliar territory. Although anything can happen once Kobe officially calls it a career, the current face of the Lakers franchise has a great chance of transcending his success from the basketball floor to the boardroom.