A lot can be said about Kobe Bryant the athlete. But only someone who suited up for the Lakers with him can tell what he was as a teammate. Joe Smith ended his career playing alongside the Black Mamba. That too during the 2010-11 season when Bryant had acquired a reputation as a sour teammate. If you asked Smith, the reality was completely different.

Bryant’s competitiveness extended to his teammates too. He was not above butting heads with the people on his side of the court; most of the players would testify that it was all part of the Mamba Mentality.

Joe Smith reminisces about Kobe Bryant

In a career spanning 16 years, Joe Smith played for 12 teams. The last one was the Los Angeles Lakers with Kobe Bryant. His post-NBA troubles get all the attention now but back then Smith’s accomplishments were underrated. He had played alongside the best, including Allen Iverson and LeBron James.

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It was Kobe Bryant who left Joe Smith the most impressed. “I think he had a different hunger,” Smith said. “We all see it. We all could kind of tell. I played with Kevin Garnett. I played with Kevin Durant. I played with LeBron twice. I played with AI. And his hunger was different. I can’t put a finger on what it was. But his will not to lose was just different.” 

That will not lose is hailed in the NBA community as the ‘Mamba Mentality.’ The competitiveness extended to even his teammates.

Around 2010-11, Bryant didn’t enjoy the best reputation. He was hard on Kwame Brown and Smush Parker. Bryant once admitted to making one of his teammates cry with his words. His popularity off the court was shaky. Some would say his style of play was selfish. 

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However, when Bryant confessed to making an unidentified teammate cry, he said it with sincere regret. That speaks volumes about his personality too. His tenacity to provoke his teammates to step up to his level was misunderstood.

Joe Smith could testify that the Black Mamba acquired an unfair reputation as a teammate.

Smith’s first impression of the Bean

The questionable deal with the Timberwolves marred the NBA journeyman’s reputation but he had the most memorable time with the Lakers from the get-go. Bryant was part of that.

Shortly after the Lakers star’s tragic passing in 2020, Joe Smith shared his story about Kobe. Bryant was the first person to approach Smith. That simple greeting dispelled the difficult teammate image surround dogging Bryant.

“After hearing all the things that you hear throughout your career about a person and how he doesn’t get along with certain people, just the interaction that you get is always something special and can always knock out all the talk that you heard about, all the negativity that you may have heard about,” Smith said. That first interaction was enough to make Smith comfortable with the trade.

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Another player, Gary Neal, had a similar story that year that changed his assumptions about Bryant. Even if his likeability was questionable from the outside, Kobe Bryant decidedly built a good relationship with his team with gestures that slipped under the radar but remain special to those teammates themselves.