While Jordan Clarkson looked to be a fine college basketball player, there probably weren’t many who pegged the 46th overall pick to become a member of the All-Rookie team during his freshman NBA season.
Alas, that’s exactly what he did and he credited some of the reasoning behind that to Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant. The same Kobe Bryant who taunted Jordan Clarkson during his first LA Lakers practice.
Clarkson recounted the experience in a Player’s Tribune piece:
It wasn’t even preseason yet, but Kobe was going full speed. Somehow he made it look as if he was just gliding around. I don’t think he had played all summer due to his injury, but he still killed everyone. The first possession, he caught the rock along the baseline and hit a turn-around jumper in my face … a shot I’ve seen him hit literally a thousand times on TV. “Hey, don’t hurt yourself, young fella,” Kobe uttered to me.
That’s so typical Kobe Bryant, but in the best way possible.
Jordan Clarkson also went on to say that while his Lakers teammate gets a lot of grief in the media, nobody ever focuses on what good the Black Mamba does.
There aren’t too many guys who get an opportunity to sit down, talk to Kobe and actually pick his brain, but I was afforded this privilege. It was an incredible learning experience for me, to say the least. For all the stories you hear about Kobe talking trash and demanding a lot from his teammates, on many occasions he’s picked us up, too. He leads by example; however, you don’t hear about that much in the media.
