Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady were once the NBA’s two most dominant and feared scorers.
McGrady’s connection to Bryant is one he feels was different and perhaps deeper than any other player Kobe lined up with or against. That’s because when McGrady made the jump to the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, he spent a summer at Kobe’s house in an effort to transition from high school hoops to professional basketball.
A tearful McGrady offered his thoughts about his dear friend and provided a shocking revelation on ESPN’s “The Jump” on Monday night, Jan. 27, 2020.
“This sounds crazy, but Kobe spoke this,” he told ESPN’s Rachel McNichols as he held back tears. “He spoke this. He used to say all the time, ‘I want to die young.’ He used to say, ‘I want to die young. I want to be immortalized. I want to have my career be better than Michael Jordan’s, and I want to die young.’
“I just thought he was so crazy for saying that.”
McGrady and Bryant had since grown apart as their careers took on different trajectories. However, they’d recently rekindled their once unbreakable bond through their daughters and the Amateur Athletic Union’s youth basketball circuit.
Fittingly, T-Mac offered that Kobe’s mindset had surely shifted from the innocent teenager who once dared to be better than Michael Jordan to the family man who walked away from the game with no regrets.
“Clearly that statement was way before kids, and I’m sure once he had kids he didn’t have that mindset,” McGrady said.
McGrady also admitted that Bryant was his saving grace when he got to the league. He said had Kobe not been in his corner or had he not had a year of experience under his belt to provide him much-needed insight, the eventual two-time scoring champ might not have made it.
Click through to see McGrady fight through an extremely difficult interview on ESPN’s “The Jump.”
