Nick Young Broke Into Kobe Bryant's Locker During College Tournament

BYCole Blake4.4K Views
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Nick Young
Nick Young shares a classic Kobe story.

Nick Young, former teammate of Kobe Bryant, broke into Bryant's locker in the Staples Center and stole his knee pads during a tournament in college.

It was the start of the Pac-10 (now the Pac-12) tournament and Young was playing for USC. He stole two knee pads out of Kobe's locker and wore them during the opening game. They looked out of place, seeing as USC's colors are cardinal and gold and the knee pads were purple.

Young explained the story on the Certified Buckets podcast earlier this week: "But the tournament is at the Staples Center, and we had the Lakers' locker room. So, I just remember telling 'Nobody can sit in Kobe Bryant's seat but me.' I don't want to be snitching on myself, but I broke into his locker, the underneath part. I took like two knee pads. They was purple. Our uniform was cardinal and gold. And I played with them. I said, 'I'm Kobe today y'all. I stole his knee pads.' So, if you look at our first game at Staples Center, I got purple knee sleeves on. I thought I was Kobe... I thought I was going to get in trouble, but they let me slide."

One fan on Twitter found a picture of Young during the game.


About The Author
Cole Blake is currently an Editor at HotNewHipHop based out of Brooklyn, New York. He began working at the site as an intern back in 2018 while studying journalism at St. John’s University. In the time since, he’s graduated with a bachelor's degree and written extensively about a wide range of topics including pop culture, film & television, politics, video games, sports, and much more. He’s also covered music festivals such as Gov. Ball and Rolling Loud. You can find him publishing work for HNHH from Monday to Wednesday or on weekends. On the sports front, Cole’s a passionate NBA and NFL fan with his favorite teams being the Indianapolis Colts and Los Angeles Lakers. He also roots for the Yankees whenever he finds himself at Yankee Stadium or the Red Storm when in the company of other SJU alumni. His favorite hip-hop artists are billy woods, Earl Sweatshirt, Cam’ron, MIKE, and Mach-Hommy.
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