Hooped Up

Most basketball fans already know Kobe Bryant loves soccer. So it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the mad geniuses at Nike fused the design of the Nike Mercurial Vapor IX, one of their most popular football boots. With the latest Kobe signature model to form the Nike Kobe 8 Mambacurial.
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A Kobe Bryant watercolour piece by Daniel Berea from Barcelona, Spain.

Designed by Michael Farhat (@ArtMobb), this is exactly how cool Kobe Bryant will look when he returns from his injury and drops 30 points in his first game back with the Lakers, with or without Dwight Howard. We miss you Bean.

In a surprise move, Nike bought ad space in a paper to cheer Kobe Bryant up while he recovers from his torn achilles.

You showed us that an 18-year-old could play with the best.
You showed us that a championship game, an exhibition game, and a charity event are all must-wins.
You showed us how to play chess while others played checkers.
You showed us how to hit game-winner after game-winner.
You showed us that an 81-point game is a real thing.
You showed us that gold still matters.
You showed us how to take an ice bath.
You showed us how to score 30 points in a quarter, twice.
You showed us the Mamba Face.
You showed us how to demand perfection and demand it from everyone.
You showed us how to put big-boy pants on.
You showed us that you were never out of it, ever.
You showed us how inspirational a pair of free throws could be.

Now, show us again.

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After Kobe Bryant tore his Achilles and before he underwent successful surgery to begin his rehabilitation, which will take anywhere between 6-9 months. Bryant was interviewed in the Lakers training room in perhaps the saddest Mamba moment of all-time. See the entire postgame interview after the jump.

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The best part (if you can call it that) about Kobe Bryant playing on perhaps the second worst team assembled by Lakers during his career, is a performance like the one he had in Portland last night. Playing all 48 minutes in the game, Bean was Mr. Everything registering 47 points, eight rebounds, five assists, four blocks and three steals.

“That’s what you try to do is you try to do whatever you can,” Bryant said of his all-around effort. “You don’t look for excuses, you don’t wait for anybody else to make rotations, you do it yourself and by doing it, it sets an example for everybody else to do the same thing.”

Not bad for a guy in his 17th season.

H/N LA Times

Kobe Bryant illustrated by Korean artist Min-suk KIM aka Kwang33.

Cold blooded killer Kobe Bryant illustrated by Asher Ben Alpay from Dumaguete City, Philippines.