Zach LaVine’s Work Ethic Was Inspired by Kobe Bryant

 

Zach LaVine is one of the best young players in the NBA. LaVine always had that fire and talent but he just keeps getting better at both ends of the court and expanding on it, he is a true student of the game. You saw that in the Tokyo Olympics when he played great defense. This happened because he no longer had to use all his energy scoring to keep his team competitive. The star guard turned that switch on because he’s a dog and the moment/situation allowed him to.

The Bulls just got a supporting cast around him and he’s thrived, leading them to an 8-4 record at press time. LaVine asked the team’s front office for help and they delivered, signing Lonzo Ball and trading for DeMar DeRozan. Chicago’s culture changed, they’re fun to watch again and a deep playoff run is not out of the question.

LaVine has played like an All-Star for a while. The two-time NBA Slam Dunk Contest champion had a career year in the 2020-21 season, averaging 27.4 points, 5.0 rebounds and 4.9 assists while shooting 50.7 percent from the field and 41.9 percent from 3-point range in 35.1 minutes over 58 games. This season he’s averaging 25.7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.8 assists on 50.0 percent shooting in 34.9 minutes over 12 games.

According to NBA legend Mark Jackson: “The one thing about Zach LaVine is that you don’t have to beg him to come into the gym.

He WANTS to be a great player, and he WORKS HIS TAIL OFF,”

If you want to be great at something, fall in love with the work. LaVine appeared on the Ball Don’t Podcast with Ekam Nagra last year and said: “I was a Kobe guy. I try not to have any weak parts in my game. I want to be as polished as I can be as a player. I’m trying to be a two-way player. I want to be known as one of the best players in the game, if not the best.”

Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest NBA players of all-time and possibly the greatest Laker ever.  His two jersey numbers are in the rafters at the STAPLES Center prove this. Kobe took over games in ways that not many players could. His mentality on and off the court is one of the main reasons why he is one of the very best to ever do it.

Anyone who studied the body, who worked with athletes, basketball players especially, if you look at Kobe Bryant’s training regimen, for the course of his prime, for the offseason, the day to day, Kobe Bryant was legitimately overtraining and he was going to a level that was borderline unhealthy and abnormal.

Getting up at 4:00 AM is not recommended, it’s very hard to recover from and you could get injured if you don’t take the right steps. Getting up at 4:00 AM on maybe four, five hours of sleep, six hours of sleep, straight to the track, sprints, agility work, conditioning work, taxing your entire lower body, then going to the court, putting up jumpers, repping up the fundamentals and the basics of the game, nothing too gimmicky, nothing too flashy, just traditional work, right hook, left hook, post game, foot work, polishing all that, pulling up shots from all over the floor, multiple counters.

From there, he would go to the weight room and there he would lift for an hour, hour and a half and it would be heavy lifting, nothing light, no band work, just traditional barbell compound lifts, heavy lower body day, heavy upper body day, it was a full five-hour work day and then he would recover. There were moments when he would come back at night and put up more shots. Kobe was obsessed with his craft, this would not be recommended today, they wouldn’t let anyone do it and most guys wouldn’t want to do it, it was too much. No one went to that place as a grinder

Eduardo Solano, from FOX Sports Radio 1340 AM Hopewell and AccuScore, wrote this about Kobe Bryant recently:

“Apart from his mindset, Bryant’s fear of not being good enough and losing gave him an upper hand against his competitors. Kobe never failed to show that he would do anything to win.”

Kobe could run all day long. He knew that if someone wants to be a great basketball player, they have to be in great shape. In Kobe Bryant’s book, The Mamba Mentality: How I Play, he discussed how everyone talks about his fancy workouts and training sessions and then he explained that he worked relentlessly to make sure that his legs and lungs were always at peak performance.

“My cardio workouts centered around recovery—that is, the time it takes to recover in between sprints. The reason I placed an acute focus on that element is because basketball dictates short bursts where you run as fast as you can, then have a moment to recover, then burst again. I wanted to make sure that I would always be ready for the next burst of action.”

Bryant concluded saying that he did a lot of time work on the track. There, he would incrementally decrease the amount of time between each set. Kobe did that until his recovery time would be almost nil after a full offseason.