Late NBA star Kobe Bryant shared how he gained the confidence to fail and rise up again

Kobe Bryant's name is always going to come up every time a discussion about the NBA pops up anywhere. The undisputed basketball champ who spent 20 years of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers might not be among us anymore, but he has left his words of wisdom behind with his fans and admirers. The beloved NBA athlete who used to play as a shooting guard for Lakers gave several interviews during his illustrious career and one of those still stands out from the rest.

In one of his last interviews with the author and former football player Lewis Howes, Bryant opened up about some of the most important lessons he had learned early in his life. These lessons stayed with him till the end and made him one of the greatest basketball stars of his time. In a particular segment of the interview, Bryant recalled the time when he didn't score a single point for an entire summer and how he gained the confidence to fail and pick himself up from the dust again and again.

"Who was more influential to you, your father or mother?" Howes questioned. "Both were influential on different points. My mom was influential daily, but my father was really influential at a critical time. At a summer when I played basketball as a 10 or 11 years old, I come in and I don't score a point for an entire summer," Bryant recounted. Howes asks if he was playing against others in the same age group or not and Bryant agrees. "Were you in the game? How did you not score even once?" Howes questions in disbelief.

"Because I was terrible," Bryant admitted. "I remember crying about it and being upset about it. My father gave me a hug and said, 'Listen, whether you score 0 or you score 60, I am going to love you, no matter what.' That is the most important thing you can say to a child. Because from that point, I was like, okay, it gives me all the confidence in the world to fail. I have the security there, but the hell with that, I am going to score 60. Right from that point, I went to work. I stayed with it and kept practicing."

Having a supportive and loving father in Bryant's life changed the whole game and helped him build a glorious career. Unfortunately, the shining star of the Lakers passed away in 2020 in a tragic helicopter accident at 41 years old, per USA Today. Bryant had taken off in a helicopter from John Wayne-Orange County Airport to Camarillo, California, where the passengers would then be driven to a youth basketball game in nearby Thousand Oaks. Bryant was joined on the flight by his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna and Christina Mauser, an assistant coach as well.

Due to some malfunction and terrible weather conditions, Bryant's helicopter crashed near a hill in Calabasas, California, before they could reach the venue. Both Bryant and his daughter Gianna passed away in the crash. In 2023, Bryant's wife, Vanessa Bryant, gave a tribute on Instagram to her husband on what would've been his 45th birthday. Kobe and Vanessa were married for two decades after first meeting on the set of a music video in 1999 when Kobe was 20 and Vanessa was 17. They married on April 18, 2001, in Dana Point, California, before welcoming daughters Natalia in 2003 and Gianna in 2006.

In an early interview with PEOPLE, she said how losing her husband is a "pain that is unimaginable." She added, "You just have to get up and push forward. Lying in bed crying isn't going to change the fact that my family will never be the same again. But getting out of bed and pushing forward is going to make the day better for my girls and me. So that's what I do. The best way to describe it is that Kobe and Gigi motivate me to keep going. Their love is unconditional and they motivate me in so many different ways."