Other on-court activities important to basketball success are more difficult to evaluate when practicing alone.

forgotten. After understanding the focus that Ledger put into portraying the Joker, Bryant knows what he has to do – go into what he will later refer to as “guard mode.”

Both careers were in fields in which a small fraction of attempts are highly successful.

Kobe didn’t just bombard Chris Sacca with questions like an inquisitive child and then forget about it. He took the answers and went to work.

Kobe was so immersed in these recorded matches that he used them to create a scouting tape of Atlanta Hawks guard John Battle.

“You can learn anything that you want to learn, you can study all these things that you have in a book, but if you don’t have the imagination to then take it to another level, it doesn’t mean anything.”

everything that happens in a game is connected in one way or another, and those who are curious enough to explore the connections can discover how to use them to their favor.

Kobe, a right-handed player, spent the entire camp using his left. He dribbled left-handed, shot left-handed, and passed left-handed.

Payton reminisced on those encounters years later. “Every time he played me and I posted him up and I ‘got it’, he would always come over to me and sneak it in my ear, ‘Gee man, why you keep killin’ me on these post-ups, man? You gotta teach me that! What should I do?’” The Glove was more than happy to provide guidance to his young opponent. “That