Kobe Bryant has always been willing to do whatever it take to gain a competitive advantage over his opponents, including learning a new language.
Portland Trail Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic made an appearance on SportsCenter last night, where he explained how Kobe once picked up some Bosnian curse words just so he could mess with Nurkic while they were out on the court.
(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Nurkic explains (H/T Yahoo Sports):
He’s shooting the free throws (Kobe), and I’m out there like: “Nobody can even touch him, how is that possible?” Whole night he was shooting free throws.
He actually said a word in my language. 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!”
After a couple years in the league, he was preparing himself and he plays against some teams he will try to learn a little bit about every player he plays.
Check out Nurkic's story about the bilingual Mamba in the video embedded below (starting at the 3:48 mark).