Kobe Bryant has been spending his retirement as a Lakers supporter. The legend revealed he's one of the Lake Show fans who happens to know at least a few words of Slovenian.
This comes in handy when your team is facing the Mavericks, whose star player, Luka Doncic, happens to be Slovenian. Doncic was about to run an inbounds play in front of Bryant when he decided to heckle him in his native tongue.
"[Kobe Bryant] was talking [in] Slovenian," Doncic said about their in-game interaction. "I was like, 'Who's talking my language?' Then I saw Kobe. I was really surprised."
One of the many famed bits of Bryant trivia is that he's become multilingual after spending most of his childhood in Italy, where his father played professionally. He's found a way to take advantage of this skill on court: Multiple foreign NBA stars have claimed that Bryant threw them off their game by swearing at them in their native language.
"[Bryant] actually said a word in my language," the Bosnian-born Jusuf Nurkic said (7:50). "I’m I was like, ‘I didn’t really hear right. He can’t speak my language!’ Then we go back and forward, and he goes again to [shoot] free throws. And he repeats that! It was [a] curse word! I was like, ‘I’m pretty sure he said that!’"
He also communicated plays directly to his former teammate, Pau Gasol, in fluent Spanish and delivered press conferences in multiple languages.
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