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The latest comes courtesy of an anonymous athletic trainer on Reddit.
According to the trainer, he was working with the US Olympic basketball team this summer in Las Vegas when he met Kobe. The two exchanged phone numbers, and the trainer told him to give him a call anytime if he wanted to do some extra conditioning work.
A few days later Kobe called him at 4:15 a.m., and asked him to come to the gym. They worked out for 75 minutes, and the trainer went back to his hotel to sleep before the next day's 11 a.m. scrimmage.
That's when things got crazy, from the trainer:
"This next part I remember very vividly. All the Team USA players were there, feeling good for the first scrimmage. LeBron was talking to Carmelo if I remember correctly and Coach Krzyzewski was trying to explain something to Kevin Durant. On the right side of the practice facility was Kobe by himself shooting jumpers. And this is how our next conversation went -- I went over to him, patted him on the back and said, 'Good work this morning.'"
'Huh?'
'Like, the conditioning. Good work.'
'Oh. Yeah, thanks Rob. I really appreciate it.'
'So when did you finish?'
'Finish what?'
'Getting your shots up. What time did you leave the facility?'
'Oh just now. I wanted 800 makes so yeah, just now.'
In effect, Kobe showed up seven hours early for an offseason scrimmage.
Kobe is having one of his best offensive seasons at age 34. When most guys his age are getting worse, he's getting more efficient, and it's not much of a surprise considering that there are TONS of stories like this.