Now that he's a free agent, Iman Shumpert has more time to work on his music career. The NBA star stopped by Ebro in the Morning to discuss his hip hop ventures, although he didn't give them a date of when fans could expect to hear his full-length project. Iman did, however, chat about his friend Kobe Bryant and shared a memory of when the late basketball icon visited his high school.
"I can't remember if somebody asked a question, but basically he was speaking on people sayin', 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' type of thing, 'Don't spend all your money in one place' type of vibe," Iman recalled. "And he said he never believed in it, because he felt, 'If I'm putting all my eggs in a basket to go for this, if I failed, and this basket drop and all the eggs break, why nobody told me I can just make more eggs?' Of course, he said it with conviction. He stared straight through us... But he couldn't see me, and I felt it," Shumpert continued. "I was just like, 'He just really believes what he's saying.' And he wants it to inspire me and it did. That was my inspiration story."
Iman also shared a second tale of a time that he was guarding Kobe during a game at Madison Square Garden. "I can't remember how much he had, but I know I had multiple steals against him," Shumpert said. "In my head, all I'm thinking of is, 'When I have this conversation with my brother after the game, how I'm gonna tell him how I stole the ball from Kobe, how I stripped Kobe before he was finna' to take a shot, how I drove by Kobe and got a dunk.' I'm thinking about all these things in my head. I'm like, so geeked."
Then, as soon as the fourth quarter began, things shifted. "Fourth quarter starts, and Kobe said, 'You had a great game, young fella,'" Iman remembered. "I swear I looked at the clock, like, 'There's 12 minutes. What you talking about? What was that?' You ain't said nothing the whole game. I've been talking sh*t, I done stole the ball, I'm hyped as hell. It's Kobe Bryant. He ain't said not one word to me." Immediately Kobe began making moves that solidified in Iman's mind that the Los Angeles Lakers icon was indeed superhuman. Check out Iman Shumpert's full interview with Ebro in the Morning below.