How Chris Paul Channels the Mamba Mentality—And How You Can Too

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“Everything negative—pressure, challenges—is all an opportunity for me to rise.” —Kobe Bryant

KOBE BRYANT AND I were almost on the same team. Hell, we actually were for a couple of hours.

How crazy would that have been? Over a decade after the trade wasn’t allowed, it’s hard not to imagine the “what ifs”? Although it’s fun to think about us playing together, I wouldn’t change my path for anything, and everything happens for a reason. I know it would have been an unreal experience playing with Kobe. I know that because we both shared an intense relationship and obsession with hard work.

It is a famous NBA story now. We had a deal done for me to be traded to the Lakers from the New Orleans Hornets during the 2010–2011 off-season, but the deal was blocked by the late NBA commissioner David Stern. This never happens, but it did this time because at that time the league owned the Hornets and that was the decision he and the league made. The Lakers were in a really great position to get me and the finances worked out so that the Lakers would have avoided the NBA’s luxury tax. I would have been teamed in the backcourt with one of the best basketball players of all time. I can’t even imagine how far we could have gone and how dominant we could have been. That wasn’t in the cards for me, though, and easy has never been a part of my story. I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating it was to be denied a chance to play with Kobe. We got a taste of it at the 2009 All-Star Game when the two of us on the West teamed up to smack the East. Once that trade didn’t work out, I was still crazy excited to get to LA with the Clippers. I had a great, storied, six-year run with the Clippers, including Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, JJ Redick, Jamal Crawford, and Matt Barnes, which was known as the Lob City era. No rim lowering needed over there, you’re welcome Dad.

Kobe and I went back years and had some of our fondest memories in 2008, during the Olympics in Beijing. Kobe and I were both early birds so it was always interesting to see which one of us would get to the gym first.

Even at the Olympics, I always wanted to get work in when people were sleeping. I pride myself still on my ability to get up early and get that work in before everyone else even gets their day started. One morning in Beijing, it had to be 5:00 a.m., and I got down to the gym and I already heard some people in there. I couldn’t believe it. Who in the world could have beat me? I was usually the one turning on the lights, but now as I was approaching the gym, I started to see who was up outworking everyone else. Of course it was Kobe, and he had already worked up a sweat. This especially struck me because Kobe was a lot older than I was, and he was still working like that. Most players would have thought he didn’t have to do that at his age and after all he’d accomplished. He could have slept in and met us there after we warmed up, and he’d earned that respect, but that wasn’t Kobe. He stayed hungry. Seeing Kobe in action was a subtle reminder of what my Phoenix Suns coach Monty Williams always says:“reps remove doubt.” We were proud together as a unit, with Kobe as our leader, to bring back Gold to the USA.

And then when the season rolled around, Kobe and I had to turn around and guard each other. I got to witness Mamba Mentality from the Mamba himself. Seeing him in action, being close enough to absorb his aura, had a way of making you a better player. It’s crazy to think about how someone who has accomplished that much was still chasing that next level. I always thought about what could have been. Well, there’s another dimension to his game that people never really got to see. A lot of people don’t realize, or just never paid attention to it, but Kobe was great at catch and shoot. I imagine if we were backcourt mates, I could have drawn a substantial amount of attention to me, giving Kobe the opportunity to move without the ball, spot up, catch, and knock down shots from anywhere on the court. Trust me, he did this for 20 years without me, but I like to think I could have helped a little bit! I know it would have been crazy, but damn, we never got our shot. Long live the Mamba, we miss you and love you, Bean.

Being a winner requires a ridiculous amount of work. I was trying to explain this to Lil Chris [my older son] on one of those days when he and one of his friends decided to work out with me. This was a few weeks after our service station visit. We were still feeling that Winston-Salem energy. We were going over a series of shooting drills, and every time the ball rimmed out or he missed, Lil Chris grew angrier and just began to flip out, so I asked, “Whatchu mad for?”

He responded by grabbing the basketball and attempting more shots.

“Are you supposed to make every shot? Like how much time do you put into this?” He just looked at me without an expression on his face. I could tell he was getting frustrated, so I slowed it down. “Listen, I don’t care if you don’t want to play basketball. If you love basketball and want to be a part of the game, there are more ways to get involved, like scouting, ownership, becoming an NBA executive, an agent, a coach—the possibilities are endless.”

For me, the trip back to the station was my attempt to show my kids a reality outside of the one we enjoy, in an effort to strengthen their relationship with hard work—to walk them through the places where Papa [my grandfather] got his hands dirty, where CJ [my older brother] and I got dirty too for the bulk of our childhood. Cam [my younger son] is hooping now too so if they both can see the place that molded me, then maybe they can develop their own idea of what working hard really is, their own personal Mamba Mentalities.

Kobe has been quoted as saying, “Trying to be the best version of yourself, that’s what the mentality means. It means every day you know you’re trying to become better. If your job is to try to be the best basketball player you can be, you have to practice, you have to train as much as you can as often as you can.”

I love this quote. You’re only as good as your work ethic—if a guy like Kobe is taking one or two thousand shots a day, then why should he feel okay trusting you with the ball if you’re complaining about taking fifty shots a day or not going to practice at all? Kobe worked hard as hell and it showed. He wasn’t out there actively trying to embarrass people, it happened because he worked so hard. I drill this into the heads of all players who come through my camps. There’s always a guy vying for your job. Are you going to just sit there and let them take it? I keep up this mentality to this day. No one is going to take my job because I’m not working hard enough to keep it.

Winners like Kobe have a laser focus on winning—they hold you accountable, they push you to be the best, and when you think you have reached your best, real winners push you to go even further. The relentless pursuit of winning isn’t fun at times, but it for sure can change your life.

I remember being a young NBA player and hearing all the stories about guys like Kobe Bryant and others I looked up to and the amazing, impossible, and inspiring workouts they did. Workouts that scared so many players away—workouts that I learned to run toward. No way in the world was I going to sit around and hear that there’s another player out there working harder than I am. Just when I thought I was working hard, I’d ask myself if I could work harder. People who achieve success at really high levels—in sports, in business, or otherwise—are wired differently.

People always ask me what I do differently, and the answer is simple: somewhere along the line, I learned to fall in love with the work. I love practice, I love weight training, I just love being in the gym. And you see that with all the greats in any sport. Success is all about figuring out your own weaknesses, learning how to combat them, and then making that a routine. Papa did this too. I’m pretty sure my grandpa didn’t want to wake up at the crack of dawn every day to deal with everyone and anyone and their issues, some who paid and some who didn’t, some who were grateful and some who weren’t. But he did what had to be done in an effort to take care of everyone. I watched Papa perform daily, and that kind of work ethic seeped into my soul. It’s why I’m so proud to be one of the oldest players in the NBA at this moment. I’m not willing to lose my spot in the league because I didn’t work hard or look for every edge I could get.

Greatness doesn’t just happen to people. It doesn’t just sneak up on you. We all have different talents and attributes. Some of us are taller, which has advantages, some are physically gifted, some are incredibly bright; those God-given talents mean nothing without work, and being a hard worker can be taught. Papa directly and indirectly gifted that kind of work ethic to CJ and me every day. It didn’t matter what we had going on in our lives, we wanted to be at the top, working and becoming better.

That’s where I learned to handle uncertainty, deal with negativity, and conquer people who didn’t believe in me. When someone tells me I can’t do something, I’m immediately thinking how I can show them that I can. My parents always talk about how I was crazy competitive even back as a kid. I grew up being the kind of guy who actually thrived when the odds were stacked against me. Being disrespected or counted out forces me to take my game to the next level. When I got to OKC, there was a graphic on ESPN that said our team had a.02 percent chance of making the playoffs. I took a screenshot and kept it in my phone, just to remember that somebody was trying to count me out. And guess what: we made the playoffs! Being counted out isn’t new to me, and I also truly appreciate those who believe in me like I believe in myself. This reminds me of Coach recruiting me to Wake when UNC was counting me out. This mentality is there for everyone if you want it enough and if you care enough about what you’re doing. It could be brake pads or getting back on defense, grinding and putting in the work will always pay off.

From Sixty-One: Life Lessons from Papa, On and Off the Court by Chris Paul with Michael Wilbon. Copyright © 2023 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

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