Kobe Bryant on MJ, Kyrie and His Biggest Pet Peeve

Recently, Los Angeles Lakers' Kobe Bryant sat down with ESPN The Magazine' Chris Palmer.

The wide ranging interview went from everything from Michael Jordan to Django, but the best thing about Palmer's piece was how open the Black Mamba has become this season.

Maybe it's age. Maybe it's the fact that his career will be over soon or maybe the stress of playing with the Dwight Howard Lakers has made Bryant more open to talk and tweet to survive this season.

Whatever the case, 2013 will go down as the year that the Lakers sucked but Kobe became even more entertaining.

Here's are some excepts from the article: 

Early on you got tired of the MJ comparisons, but a part of you had to be flattered, right?
I appreciated them, but after a while it just got old. They eventually faded away because I was putting together my own identity. But I’ll never forget how much I learned from MJ. I got so much from him. I knew what he did, I knew his moves and I used them. But for me the comparisons didn’t work because our situations were totally different. I came straight out of high school and played with a dominant big in Shaquille. Man, I was so young when I got to the NBA. What was I, like, 17? I mean, 17! The more you think about it, my situation was completely different than MJ’s, so the comparisons were just, you know, I stopped paying attention to them. 

You versus LeBron? Who wins?
Me. No question. As far as one-on-one, I’m the best to ever do it...I played T-Mac. I cooked him. Roasted him. Wasn’t even close. Ask him, he’ll tell you. When I was about 20, we were in Germany doing some promotional stuff for that other sneaker company and we played basketball every day. We were in the gym all the time. We played three games of one-on-one to 11. I won all three games. One game I won 11-2. After the third game he said he had back spasms and couldn’t play anymore. 

What about Kyrie Irving?
[Huge smile, laugh.] Kyrie’s my boy, but he knows he doesn’t have anything for me. He doesn’t want to see me. But it would be fun. I’ve beaten a lot of guys one-on-one, like Reggie Miller and Grant Hill. I used to play Caron Butler all the time in practice when he was with the Lakers. When I was a rookie I used to get Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones. They know. They’ll tell you. They used to come at me hard but I wasn’t having that. I love going one-on-one with someone. That’s what I do. I’ve never lost. It’s a whole different game, just to have them right in front of you and be able to do whatever you want.   


What’s your biggest pet peeve?
I hate dog s---. I won’t go near it. So pissed when I step in it. I’ve got four dogs and I just don’t do dog doo. I’m a diva when it comes to that. Back in the day when I was in Italy, I used to order shoes from Nike all the time. I had to have all the fresh joints. I ordered the Elephant Print Jordans that were amazing. I went to the park to play and stepped in a huge pile of dog s---. You wouldn’t believe how mad I was. I was breaking off sticks to try to get it out of the crevices. I smacked them together and scraped the soles on the curb but couldn’t get it all out. Ever since that day I just can’t stand dog crap. 


Read the full article here!

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