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00:00 What would you say was the biggest difference between Kobe and MJ?
00:06 Wow, there's so many similarities. The biggest difference was that Kobe,
00:17 honestly, I think the biggest difference was that Kobe knew when to kind of turn
00:21 it off, if that makes any sense. Michael was kind of relentless. I mean, he would,
00:27 and when he got to know you, he would just rib you constantly and there would
00:32 always be something about you, what you're wearing. Like I had a
00:36 mustache, he'd always make fun of me. I mean, whatever it was, but I always felt kind of,
00:42 you know, like on edge with him. Not really in a bad way, but that I had to,
00:48 I just had to watch my P's and Q's, you know. And with Kobe, I guess because I was
00:53 around him so much more and in a lot of more laid-back ways, you know, like on the
00:59 team plane or on the bus or training room or whatever, that I just got to
01:06 see the side of him that really not a lot of people got to see. And he was an
01:12 incredible human being, just an incredible guy. We joke about all kinds of stuff. He
01:17 started having kids and I have three girls, you know, and he started having
01:22 girls and we'd be talking about raising girls, you know, and what that meant. And,
01:27 you know, all that. It was just, it was a beautiful friendship really, honestly.
01:32 It's interesting because I think, you know, we all heard Vanessa speak for the
01:37 first time at the memorial and you really gave a peek into who Kobe was as
01:43 a husband and who Kobe was as his dad and this is something that you were really
01:47 intimately privy to. You saw him around his family in a way that most of us
01:53 didn't. Yeah. What was that like? What was he like behind the scenes? Well, I was so
01:58 lucky to have a couple of occasions where once I got to go to the house and
02:03 he had this incredible workout facility in the house and the girls, Gianna and
02:09 Natalia, were young, very young. I mean, I think Gianna was probably, you know, a
02:14 toddler and at that time and Natalia was maybe three or four at the most and, you
02:23 know, he's doing his workout and they're crawling all over him and he is like,
02:26 he's the doting dad. And I saw him so many times just go from mamba to dad. I
02:37 mean, and you saw this too, that way where he would be in, you know, there's that
02:41 double doors where the Laker locker room is, right? And on one side of the double
02:47 doors, he's the mamba, you know, in the locker room talking to all you guys,
02:51 working with me or whoever it is and performing on the court, right? As soon
02:58 as he crossed that threshold, he was dad and he was the husband and he'd have the
03:04 girls, you know, hand in hand and they'd walk, you know, Vanessa out and he would
03:09 graciously give, you know, a little tidbit of an interview to some of
03:14 you guys as he was walking out but it's very obvious that he just kind of wanted
03:17 to get out but was never rude about it in any way. But you could tell that
03:23 he had just turned that switch. It was like, I'm mamba and now I'm not mamba, you
03:27 know, it's like a superhero kind of thing. And then he was dad and it
03:33 was really inspiring for me because a lot of times I'd get home from a
03:39 game, especially if it's a day game and, you know, my kids were little at the time
03:43 and I get home and I just couldn't let it go or unwind or, you know, I get really
03:49 jacked up and emotionally involved a lot of these games, especially if something
03:53 goes wrong and technically or I miss something I should have gotten or
03:58 whatever it could be. And it was inspiring to see him be able to turn the
04:04 switch, you know, and I know that the stories are legendary that he'd go home
04:08 and he'd be icing all night or he'd be on the phone with Gary Beattie about this
04:13 treatment or that, be watching game film. But I also know that how attentive and
04:19 how doting he was as his dad. Yeah, it's great.