Mamba Monday’s | Ready When It Matters

Kobe Bryant spent a lot of his childhood in Italy because his dad played professional basketball. When he came to the United States, he said he was behind a lot of his peers because he didn’t grow up playing basketball in America.

When he was asked about this, Kobe said that at 13, he had a ‘kill list,’ and everybody who was ranked above him was on it. His missions was to kill (on the basketball court - not in real life) everybody who was above him.

To do this, he focused on building up his weaknesses. He said it is hard working on your skills playing AAU basketball because you are always playing games and always trying to win. But each year, he would work on something new so that by the time he was 17, he was a completely different player while many of his peers were the same players with the same strengths and weaknesses.

My college roommate has a son who is a top 5 player in the country. His journey is the same. As a freshman in high school, he was not a nationally ranked player, but every year, he grew his strengths, and every summer he worked on a weakness. He is now a complete basketball player with no real weakness.

He saw the ranking and used them as motivation to keep improving.

It’s not about where you start, it’s about how you finish. Middle school rankings are cool to brag about, but they mean nothing when you get to high school and college.

What really matters is that you keep growing and getting better so that when it really matters, you are ready.