Two of Kobe Bryant’s final interviews were with Arash Markazi of the Los Angeles Times in October 2019 and Mark Medina of USA Today just 10 days before his death. The retired NBA star talked about everything from the state of basketball in Los Angeles to Kobe’s life as a husband and father. Here are a few highlights from Bryant’s final interviews with Markazi and Medina.
Kobe explained why he didn’t make many trips to the Staples Center after retiring from the NBA in 2016
“For me to make the trip up to Staples Center, that means I’m missing an opportunity to spend another night with my kids when I know how fast it goes. … I want to make sure the days that I’m away from them are days that I absolutely have to be. I’d rather be with them than doing anything else.”
What Kobe said about Gianna
“What I love about Gigi is her curiosity about the game. She’s very curious. Even in a heated situation in a game where it’s going back and forth, she can detach herself and come to me and ask a very specific question, which is not common. She’ll come over and say, ‘OK, on this particular trap when I’m trying to close the gap but she’s getting on the outside, do I need to change my angle?’ It’s a very specific question. That’s pretty d*mn cool.”
Kobe’s plans for his book publishing empire
“Our challenge now is taking books and making them into films, feature films and in series, some of which will be animated, some of which will be live-action. So it’s figuring out how to do that, while understanding that owning the intellectual property is absolutely essential. And so that’s our challenge. It’s fun to figure out the journey but also extremely frustrating because things don’t move as fast as you want them to. But that’s okay.”
Kobe Bryant’s EPOCA children’s book series has made the New York Times bestseller list several times. The latest book in the series, The River of Sand was released posthumously on December 15, 2020. Learn about all the books in Kobe Bryant’s EPOCA series here!
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