Kobe Bryant Says He Skipped Basketball for Weeks to Dance When He Was Younger

The lengthy career of legendary Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant was largely defined by his constant willingness to improve his game.

However, Bryant wasn’t always zeroed in on getting to the court, with the superstar revealing on social media that he once skipped two weeks worth of practice to sharpen his dancing for a school program.

Bryant’s dedication to basketball was legendary, which helped him put together a 20-year career in the NBA and has him destined for the Basketball Hall of Fame. During that lengthy span, he was named to 18 All-Star teams, winning MVP in the game four times, and also was named to 15 All-NBA teams.

Yet Bryant, who won league MVP honors for the 2007-08 season, was also driven to team goals, leading his Lakers to five NBA titles. In those five finals wins, he was twice named series MVP.

When it came to regular season statistics, Bryant delivered major numbers in multiple categories, including career per-game averages of 25.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.4 steals per game. For collective numbers in those categories, he ended his career with 33,643 points, 7,047 rebounds, 6,306 assists and 1,944 steals.

Bryant’s focus on the arts has continued since his 2016 retirement and has already led him to be awarded an Academy Award in March 2018, when he won for an animated short, “Dear Basketball.” The short was an outgrowth of a 2015 poem that he had written with his retirement from the game looming.