Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan have a lot in common. They’re both amazing basketball players with a highly competitive spirit. They’ll both go down as two of the greatest players in basketball history and they both were under the tutelage of Hall of Fame coach and Zen Master, Phil Jackson.
In an interview with FOX Sports Jackson shared an interesting tidbit about when he introduced the two legends to each other.
Shocking revelations from Phil Jackson: It turns out that Kobe Bryant is really confident. In an interview with Fox Sports Live, Jackson said that he asked Michael Jordan to talk to Kobe Bryant shortly after Jordan’s second retirement in 1999. One might expect a young player to be a bit star-struck when meeting a legend like Jordan, but this is Kobe Bryant we’re talking about here. Jackson said the first thing that Kobe said to MJ upon meeting him was ”I could kick your ass one-on-one.” This is, of course, the perfect Kobe Bryant response — we’d imagine Kobe says some version of that to most everyone he meets, whether or not they’re even professional basketball players.
Ironically enough years later when asked about playing legends in their prime, Jordan said he wouldn’t lose to anyone except one person.
via ESPN:
