Kobe Bryant’s Gladwellian Success
Extraordinary Opportunity, 10,0000 Hours, and Grit.
By Josh Rosa | Missional Ministries Major and Business Minor at Bethel University (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant fought to get his team one step closer to a playoff berth in the extremely competitive Western Conference in the 2014 NBA season. On April 13th, the Lakers set to play their division rival, the Golden State Warriors, at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. In the fourth quarter, the Warriors had a two-point lead on the Lakers and Bryant had the ball at the top of the key. Bryant began to dribble, cut to the basket, and was fouled but, he felt a pop. Bryant had torn his achilles. Bryant described the feeling as if his calf were touching the ground. Even on one leg, Bryant wanted his team to be victorious. He hobbled to the free throw line to shoot. He made both shots and tied the game at 109 a piece. He was then carried off the court like a warrior who defeated the enemy. The Lakers won this key game with a final score of 118–116 (Chorpa 4:12–6:20).
If you ask anyone that has ever worked with Kobe Bryant, they would say he is the hardest worker they have ever met due to his drive to be the best and win at any cost. Whether it is winning a NBA MVP, Championship, or even an Academy Award, Bryant wanted to not just succeed, but be the best at everything he did. According to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, “the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder (39).” Kobe Bryant exemplifies Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers theories about extraordinary opportunities, 10,000 hours, and grit leading to his success.
After Bryant’s senior year of high school, he decided that he would not play college basketball and enter the NBA draft. Bryant started “I wanted to learn how to become the best basketball player in the world. And if I’m gonna learn that, I gotta learn from the best. ” (Chorpa 24:56–25:04). Bryant believed that people go to school to become the best at what they want to be and at the age of eighteen, he knew he wanted to play basketball. He continued by stating that even if someone his age wanted to be better than him they were not able to because of other responsibilities and Bryant concluded by stating “So, I’ve already won” (Chorpa 25:26–25:52). Kobe Bryant’s extraordinary opportunity of skipping college and going to the NBA allowed him to become the best basketball player due to his access to learn from the best in the world.
Bryant’s opportunity to start his NBA career much earlier than other players his age was not typical for a senior in high school. According to a Clearing House article titled “Interscholastic Basketball’’ by Bob Reising, entering the NBA after college was always an option, but it was risky to skip college because it provided the educational fall back in case of an injury. This trend did not increase until 1995 when the Minnesota Timberwolves drafted Kevin Garnett and prospects like Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal followed in Garnett’s step the following year. The article also echoed what Bryant had Mentioned in Gotham Chopra’s film MUSE that this opportunity allowed for these unique players to mature not just in their basketball skills, but in their maturity as well (Resising).
According to Outliers, Gladwell writes that some of the best had to take opportunities to help them grow in order to become masters at their craft. He specifically discussed one of the most innovative and may be considered the greatest band ever, The Beatles. The band had gifts before they had their big break, but you need practice to become the best. For the Beatles, they began their musical journey by performing in strip clubs in Hamburg, Germany, and according to the band’s singer John Lennon, “ We got better and got more confidence. We couldn’t help it with all the experience playing all night long” (Gladwell 49). Playing all night allowed the Beatles to get the practice they needed faster than anyone else because the opportunity to play all night at these clubs allowed them to become one of the greatest bands to ever step on stage.
Similar to Bryant and the Beatles, H.G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream showed multiple examples of extraordinary opportunity, but none compared to the opportunity of Chris Comer. Comer was a junior running back for the Permian Panthers and was the back up to senior and team star Boobie Miles, and Don Billingsley. At the beginning of the season, Miles hurt his knee early in the season and was out for the majority of the season and was never the same player after he came back. While Miles was out, Billingsley was bumped up to the starting position, but he failed to live up to the expectation due to fumble issues which opened the door for Comer. Comer excelled at the starting position and was a huge part of the offense which made it to the state tournament (Bissinger xxxii). If these events did not happen, the Panthers may not have had the success they had if Comer did not become the starting running back.
With the opportunity of entering the NBA after high school, Bryant had the extraordinary opportunity of learning how to be the greatest at his craft and in order to do this, he had to learn from the greatest basketball players in the world. Through this opportunity, this allowed Kobe to become the youngest All-Star in NBA history and learn what a playoff atmosphere is like which allowed him to become a five time champion.
When Bryant was a child, his father, Joe “JellyBean” Bryant, played in the NBA, but later in his career, he made the choice of playing overseas in Italy to continue his basketball career. Bryant stated that he would always be the kid who would mop the sweat off the floor at the games. Kobe would beg his dad to let him go to practice with him, but his Joe would not let Kobe come most of the time, so Kobe would ride his bike with his basketball in his hand to the park and either play basketball with the other kids, or just shoot (Chorpa 14:20–15:45). Bryant’s passion for the game of basketball and him being around his dad and being exposed to the professional basketball atmosphere at a very young age.
In Outliers, Gladwell says the 10,000 hours rule is “required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert — in anything” (40). The practice and time that needs to be devoted in order to become a master at something, you need to have passion in order to do so. Bryant exemplifies this definition from Gladwell 10,000 hours due to his passion for the game of basketball and how he not only just played basketball every day at a young age, but was always around a professional atmosphere from his father.
Few athletes have had careers like Kobe Bryant’s, but one athlete that is considered one of the greats in his sports is Tiger Woods. According to the article “The Chosen One” written by Gary Smith from the Sports Illustrated book Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories, when Woods was a child, his father Earl Woods, knew Tiger was destined to change not just the game of golf, but change the world as well. His father would practice how to handle the pressure that comes with being a professional athlete and developing mental toughness that comes with golf. Earl would also drop Tiger off at the local golf course and when he went to go pick up Tiger at the end of the day, Tiger would have wads of cash in his pockets from the adults he had beat that day (Smith 43). Similar to Bryant, Woods was always practicing the sport he loves and learned what it takes to be a professional in his sport. That led Woods to excel in his sport at a young age and allowed him to become one of the greatest golfers of all time and the practice from his childhood that got him one step ahead of the game.
Due to Kobe Bryant’s upbringing, he was allowed to get in his 10,000 hours much quicker and earlier than others because of how he was always surrounded by basketball.
May 12th, 1997, the Lakers and rookie Kobe Bryant were in Utah facing the Jazz in game five of the Western Semi-Conference Finals. The Jazz were leading the series three wins to the Lakers one and the Lakers were trying to keep the series and their season alive. Bryant had studied the ins and outs of the Jazz and was as prepared for this series as he had ever been. This was the biggest stage Bryant had been on in his career and he crumbled in the spotlight with four airballs in crunch time, including one to win the game and prevent overtime and another to send the game into double overtime. The Lakers lost the series and after they returned to Los Angeles that night at three in the morning and right after he left the airport, Bryant went to a high school near his home and shot all day. He did not leave the gym for any reason and kept shooting and practicing while envisioning the airballs he shot the previous night (Chorpa 31:23–34:21). The grit of Kobe Bryant allowed him to become one of the NBA’s all-time greats.
According to an NPR article titled The Power And Problem Of Grit by Angela Duckworth which discusses grit and what it can do. Duckworth discussed her study of grit in graduate school and was defined as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals” (Duckworth). In this study they found that those who have tremendous success and those who did the best were not the smartest, but the grittiest. Grit in anybody can lead to having tremendous success and Bryant is an example of what grit should represent.
In Outliers, Gladwell goes into depth about the KIPP Academy, a middle school in The Bronx where they drive their students to work harder than what was expected of them. Due to these students being in a low-income community and were set up to become failures due to their upbringing. However, the KIPP Academy wanted to change that stereotype. This school has longer school days and they also have an extra three weeks of class in July. These students learned about grit at a very young age due to all the extra work the academy requires them to do. This may make them not just smarter than the average student, but they have to grind to do the extra work and these students do realize that all this work will help them succeed in the future (Gladwell 261).
A large part of why Bryant had the trait of grit was not just because of how hard he worked on and off the court, but how consumed he was by the game of basketball. In a CBS Sports article titled How Kobe Bryant’s ‘Mamba Mentality’ changed the NBA, James Herbert reflected on the life and legacy of Bryant after his tragic passing in January of 2020. In this article, Herbert specifically goes in-depth of how Bryant was identified by his “Mamba Mentality”. This is described as a mentality that leads to obsession and prioritizing your goals over a typical easy-going life. It is about mastering whatever task is in front of you and “wanting not only to win, but to dominate”. Bryant exemplified this not just after airballing against the Jazz and working in the gym all night, but being responsible for guarding the greatest basketball player of all time in Michael Jordan and thinking you are going to dominate him. When Allen Iverson beat him, not just moving on to the next game, but studying every game Iverson ever played and reading every article about him just to exploit his weakness (Herbert). That is what “Mamba Mentality” is about, not just wanting to win but being consumed by it, to absolutely obliterate everyone in your path that prevents you from winning no matter what the cost. Kobe Bryant exemplifies what grit is, being able to succeed no matter what it costs.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski of the Duke University Blue Devils prepared his 2018 team for a tournament in Canada and on this particular day of practice in Durham, North Carolina, Krzyzewski started by telling the team a story. Not of a former Blue Devil or even a college basketball player, but he talked about coaching the United States men’s basketball team and working on the stand still three-point shot. Kobe Bryant told Coach K he never got to shoot that shot because he was always double-teamed. Krzyzewski responded by saying Bryant will get this shot because other all-stars on the team, such as Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony, would not get double-teamed. Initially, when Team USA started playing games, Bryant missed the open threes. This led Bryant to shoot one-thousand shots every night until that shot became more routine (“Be As Tough As Your Mother” 1:30–2:00).
Bryant did not need to put that much time into working on that shot because no other country in the Olympics could match the talent and skill that Team USA possessed that summer. Bryant could have easily just let that issue go and keep missing those threes, or not take them, but inevitably still get the gold, but he had the grit to put in the time to improve that aspect of his game while still attaining the gold medal.
Bryant’s Gladwellian traits of grit, 10,000 hours, and extraordinary opportunity led to him not only being one of the greatest basketball players to ever lace up the sneakers, but one of the most successful, hardworking, and inspirational people to ever walk the face of the earth. Many children all have dreams like Bryant’s of playing in the NBA. However, Bryant showed that dreams are not just handed to you. If you want to achieve your dreams, you need to work for them and not just wait for them to come to you and if you want to be the MVP, a five-time champion, an Olympic gold medalist it requires even more. This level requires devotion, sacrifice, and being the hardest worker in your field, but in order to do this, we need to find the mamba within use and nothing will prevent success both in and outside of athletics.
WORKS CITED
“Be As Tough As Your Mother.” Earn Everything, season 1, episode 3, ESPN +, 2018.
Bissinger, H.G. Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and A Dream. Boston: DaCapo Press, 1990.
Chopra, Gotham, director. KOBE BRYANT’S MUSE. Showtime, 2015. Web.
Duckworth, Angela, guest. “The Power and Problem of Grit.” Hidden Brain: A Conversation about Life’s Unseen Patterns, Season 1, National Public Radio, 05 April, 2016. Web.
Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story Of Success. New York : Back Bay Books, 2011. Print. 3, April 2020
Herbert, James. “How Kobe Bryant’s ‘Mamba Mentality’ Changed the NBA.” CBSSports.com, CBS Sports, 1 Feb. 2020, .
Reising, Bob. “Interscholastic Basketball.” Clearing House, vol. 70, no. 6, 1997, p. 292. Web.
Smith, Gary. “The Chosen One.” Going Deep: 20 Classic Sports Stories, by Gary Smith, Sports Illustrated Books. 2008, pp. 38–58.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Josh Rosa, a freshman from Plymouth, Minn., seeks a degree in Missional Ministries and a minor in Business from Bethel University and a career as a Youth Pastor in the Twin Cities and to coach high school football and lacrosse on the side. Rosa loves to watch and play sports, chill with friends at the lake while jamming to music, and eating chicken wings.
WHAT I’VE LEARNED
Success does not just come from talent and hard work. Malcolm Gladwell showed me that there are many underlying factors that lead to success.
It is okay to write sentences that have every few words and it can even provide more detail than long sentences.
Scott Winter never makes a mistake. Scott also showed me that writing can be fun and entertaining for school. It does not always have to be about serious and academic topics. You can write about literally anything. From your morning routine, to writing about Kobe Bryant. Taking the small and boring things, and making them entertaining, is possible.
Gary Smith reminded me how influential sports are to this world. Specifically, Smith showed this through Tiger Woods and how before his career started he was impacting the world. From receiving a larger deal from Nike than Michael Jordan, to being destined to change the world. Wood’s impact has surpassed what the game of golf presented him.
Kobe Bryant taught me that if you want to be the best, you have to obsess. You need to devote yourself to your craft and make the sacrifice of having a normal life to be great.
I found out that academic journals on sports heroes are hard to come by. I searched for hours over a span of nights and only found a few that hardly related to my hero.
I learned that research can be fun, if you care about the topic. While researching Kobe Bryant, I came across multiple documentaries such as “MUSE” that were interesting and made the research not feel like a chore. Plus, I got to watch a movie for homework.
I learned COVID-classes are the worst. However, it taught me how to be more disciplined with my studying due to the lack of having a set schedule. I had to make sure that I was actually staying focused while doing class work. It also prepared me for what video meetings will be like in a work atmosphere. I learned how to deal with the awkwardness of not having people in the room while I am talking, but they are still present and seeing my body language.
