Thinking That Talent Makes All the Difference to Succeeding? Kobe Bryant Story Proves the Opposite
Work and perseverance always make a difference in the long run.
Talent has always been the stuff of dreams and even fantasies. If you have played competitive sports like I did when I was younger, you must have necessarily met athletes who were more talented than others. I'm talking about people for whom everything seems easy.
You're going to have to repeat the same moves over and over again to hope to achieve only half the mastery that a talented person will have almost instinctively.
If you didn't play competitive sports, I can take the example of a brilliant student when you were in high school or university. A student who works less than others, but understands everything better and faster than others. When you meet people with this kind of talent, it can even be demoralizing.
The story of Kobe Bryant is an example to study
Being a lifelong basketball fan, I follow the NBA for a long time. Kobe Bryant has always had a special place in my heart. This player has always fascinated me. His tragic death, on January 26, 2020, deeply saddened me. At the time, I took the time to reveal two essential lessons that his life had taught us.
Although it has been just over a year since Kobe Bryant passed away, he is still present in the hearts of NBA fans. All players continue to talk about the man who was a role model in their rise to a professional playing career.
Recently, I saw an interview with Gary Vitty who was the physical trainer for the Los Angeles Lakers for 32 years. This allowed him to work with a whole bunch of NBA legends. Gary Vitty has had the opportunity to develop Kobe Bryant throughout his career with the Lakers.
When you talk to him about Kobe Bryant, Gary Vitty's eyes light up right away.
During the interview, the reporter asked Gary Vitty what made Kobe Bryant different from the rest of the NBA players. In the background, the goal was to understand why Kobe Bryant had been able to dominate the NBA for so long. Many people expected Gary Vitty to praise Kobe Bryant's superior talent.
This was not the case at all.
Kobe Bryant was not the most talented NBA player
For Gary Vitty, there is no doubt that Kobe Bryant was talented. You don't become one of the best NBA players without a big talent. However, Kobe Bryant's greatest asset was not that he was more talented than other NBA players:
“Kobe was talented, but he wasn't the most talented player of all. I can tell you, I saw them all, and Kobe was no more special than anyone else. Some players were more talented than him.”
Hearing this, Kobe Bryant fans must have been scared. Is Gary Vitty criticizing the Black Mamba?
Gary Vitty's goal here was not to criticize the Kobe Bryant legend, but rather to show that talent was an overrated thing:
“Let's get back to this talent story. Kobe taught me that talent is the most overrated thing in the world. What matters is what you do with it.”
Kobe Bryant had talent, but other NBA players obviously had more than he did. However, Kobe Bryant had something that few NBA players have: an extraordinary mind.
Kobe Bryant had a quality that placed him above all other NBA players
Kobe Bryant wanted to win more than anything else in the world. This desire, which was already present in Michael Jordan, motivated him to work harder, but also smarter than the vast majority of NBA players:
“Not only did Kobe Bryant work harder than anyone else, he worked smarter than anyone else. Intellectually, he was brilliant at his job.”
Each day, Kobe Bryant was the first to arrive at the gym. He was also the last to leave. He didn't want to leave anything to chance. During the interview, Vitty also explained that Kobe Bryant even went so far as to watch video footage of the game at halftime to make the necessary adjustments to perform even better in the second half.
Kobe Bryant had removed the words "I can't" and "I won't be able to" from his vocabulary. He was simply confident that he could achieve his goal every year: to win the NBA title.
By the end of his career, Kobe Bryant was able to leave with his head held high with 5 NBA titles. He will forever remain a Laker legend, perhaps even the greatest player in Laker history according to another legend, Magic Johnson.
Talent does not lead to success, motivation and perseverance do
This story about Kobe Bryant is there to remind us of a fundamental truth. In life, it's not the talent you have initially that will make the difference over time. It's the work you're going to do every day over a long period of time. Life is a marathon, not a sprint.
Highly talented people often tend to be lazy and work less than others because of the initial advantages that their talent gives them. If they don't understand over the course of their lives that to last, they have to work hard, they will waste their talent.
It's no coincidence that so many great talents who seem to have a bright future ahead of them never succeed or last in the NBA. Of course, this is true for all other professional sports leagues.
In the future, instead of complaining about what you can't control, namely your intrinsic talent, focus on the things you can control: your motivation to work hard every day over the long term to exploit the talent you have as best you can.
If you do this by drawing inspiration from Kobe Bryant's unfailing will, you will inevitably achieve great things sooner or later.
Some reading:
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