Kobe Bryant Once Had a Guidance Counselor Who Told Him Playing in the NBA Was “Not Realistic”

If you haven't noticed by now, Kobe Bryant was born to be a basketball player. He probably could have pursued a number of other careers, but his passion was always basketball. It's why he's lasted as long as he has in the NBA.

But there's some guidance counselor out there who couldn’t see that passion back in the 1980s. According to Kobe, he sat down with the counselor when he was 10 to talk about his future. And when Kobe said that he had his heart set on being an NBA player, the counselor told him he should think about other options.

“I had a counselor, a guidance counselor,” Kobe told CNBC last night. “He asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I said I wanted to be an NBA player. I was probably 10 years old. He said, ‘You know, that’s not very realistic,’ and I said, ‘Well, this is what I want to be.’”

Kobe said he used his counselor's words as motivation—he uses just about everything (no, really, everything) for motivation, doesn’t he?—and, at 10, he decided he was going to commit himself to being an NBA player.

“I thought, ‘If this is so hard to accomplish, how in the world am I going to accomplish it if I don’t put all my eggs in one basket? If I don’t focus 100 percent on this, I’m never going to get there,’” he said.

A guidance counselor telling a child to keep his options open isn’t the worst thing in the world. But seeing as how Kobe’s dad played professionally, isn’t it weird that the counselor told him that playing in the NBA was “not realistic”? It was at least a little realistic, no?

Check out the video above to hear Kobe speak more about the counselor and the NBA dreams he had as a kid.

Send all complaints, compliments, and tips to [email protected].

[via CNBC]