"He's not going through the motions when he's shooting jump shots," Canada national team assistant coach Jay Triano told the Toronto Star of Bryant's workout in an empty gym after a practice at last summer's Olympic qualifying tournament.
"They're game shots at game speed. And the repetitions over and over and over. . . . You'd think he'd be done and he's going on to the next spot. And he goes back and he shoots fade-aways and he shoots 'em off the bounce.
"I was just like, 'Holy smoke.' You get tired throwing the ball back, let alone shooting it."
The big question is: Who is Kobe Bean Bryant now?
The truth is, he was never ours, nor are any of our sports heroes.
They're all their own and none more than Bryant, whom so few would ever know at all, and fewer as time went on.
Utterly a creature of his family, still living with his parents when he arrived, he's now utterly a creature of his own family and hired retainers in Newport Beach, a formidable commute from Staples Center.
The closer you were, the more likely he was to turn his back on you as he did with Sonny Vacarro, the sneaker maven who was his first mentor, and agent Arn Tellem, who brought him to then-Lakers general manager Jerry West.
Bryant's face is unlined and his confidence intact, if not unshaken, but he has scars that don't show, like the Eddie Murphy character in "Trading Places" who proclaims, "Karate man bruise on the inside!"
Bryant still doesn't speak to some Lakers officials and has only tentatively signaled a thaw in his relationship with owner Jerry Buss.
When a chipper Bryant recently joked about GM Mitch Kupchak going from "F to A-plus," his comments about Buss were polite, lacking enthusiasm, much less any acknowledgment that Kobe, himself, did anything wrong.
It's not that Buss was good to Bryant. Bryant made Buss hundreds of millions of dollars so anything Buss gave him, Kobe earned that too.
On the other hand, Buss was good to Bryant, recognizing him as Showtime Personified from his arrival at 17, favoring him above all others, even O'Neal.
Rather than put the blame for O'Neal's departure on Bryant, as Kobe charged last spring, the owner always took personal responsibility.
Rather than mislead Bryant about his commitment while building for the future with Bynum, Buss' organization created a future where none existed.
