*In the time he spent with the NBA, Kobe Bryant was known for spectacular moments on the court, he philanthropy off the court and the business dealings made to enhance his personal and professional lives.
Yet being the highest-paid player with a two-year $48.5 million extension in 2013, shoe and endorsement deals, and a $6 million investment in BodyArmor that ultimately grew to be worth approximately $400 million could not compare to the best contract the basketball icon ever signed.
A contract he made with himself when he was 15 years old.
“He wrote a contract to himself,” Robby Schwartz, a high school teammate of Bryant’s, shared in the new Max documentary series “Kobe: The Making of a Legend.” “
‘I’m going to work out with weights in the morning. I’m going to do my basketball stuff in the afternoon.’”
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Points highlighted in Bryant’s contract include:
First person to practice.
Taking 1,000 jump shots a day.
Doing suicides (running drills), even though he was the best player on the team, at full sprint.
“He had a contract with himself,” Schwartz says. “And he’s not going to break that contract.”
Needless to say Bryant’s agreement laid the blueprint for every future contact he would sign as well as very future accomplishment to come.
Although the connection between Bryant and his contract isn’t explicit in the documentary, Inc. acknowledged that his desire for greatness was a great motivator.
“He was very much moved by the fact we spent a lot of time in sophomore year talking about Joseph Campbell and the hero’s journey,” Jeanne Mastriano, Bryant’s English teacher, says in the series. In the classic narrative arc, the hero encounters a challenge, overcomes it, and is transformed. “The idea of determining what it is that you really love, and what it is that you really want, and going after that with every fiber, every part of your body, and heart, and soul and passion.”
For Bryant, becoming the greatest basketball player ever wasn’t just a dream. It served a purpose in casting a shadow over the process, a hero’s journey he would make his own in mind body and soul.
“It was the consistency of the work, Bryant explained in 2020 on Lewis Howes’s School of Greatness podcast. “Monday, get better. Tuesday, get better. Wednesday, get better. You do that over a period of time — three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years — you get to where you want to go. It’s simple. It’s simple math.”
As for the particular’s with Bryant’s contact with himself? It boils down to simple instructions:
Do the work.
Do what others were not willing to do.
Do what others could not even imagine doing.
Fulfill that contract, and everything else would follow.
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