Kobe's Personal Connections

A story about how Kobe Bryant would remember personal details about people and go out of his way to maintain relationships, even with people who weren't particularly important to his career.

"We met a guy who knew Kobe Bryant - he trained Kobe's daughter before she passed away in that tragic accident. I asked him to tell me some Kobe stories. If you read on the internet, all Kobe stories are Nike Kobe, Black Mamba Kobe, about this ruthless competitor, hard work, kind of an asshole on the court.

But this guy who actually knew Kobe told me a different side. He said Kobe would call my mom on her birthday. And who am I to him? Unbelievable that he would FaceTime my mom on her birthday. I don't know how he even knew her birthday or how he did it, but from that day forth, my mom was the biggest Kobe Bryant fan in the world.

The trainer asked Kobe why he was so good with remembering details about people. Kobe said, 'Look, this will be the only 5 seconds I maybe will ever interact with this person, but for the rest of their lives they're going to tell everybody they know about Kobe Bryant. They might tell 3,000 people over the rest of their life about this interaction. So it's so simple - if it's so lightweight for me, it costs me almost nothing, and yet for them it could be a huge payoff.'"