 Thank you for stopping by today Kobe, we really appreciate it. You've been busy since your basketball career and starting Granity Studios and a lot going on, an Oscar award-winning filmmaker and now you're launching the Wisenerd series, a fantastic fantasy book, part of a series of books that are going to be coming out geared for teaching children some life lessons. And what was the inspiration for Granity? Well, the inspiration for Granity was how do we create stories that raise a certain awareness of how to deal with the journey within, the emotional journey. I feel like a lot of kids, we teach them certain actionable things, basketball, soccer, football, whatever the case may be, but we're missing the emotional component that comes along with that, the anxiety that comes along with that, the anger or the love and all these emotional things that take place from play to play, we're missing that teaching moment. And so the best way to do it, at least what I found with my children is not to tell them about it because after a while they're just like, I want to hear it no more. But instead you kind of put it into something that's creative, right? And so through entertainment, through fantasy, through magic, you start creating life lessons that are easier to digest. Yeah, in a way it feels like you're mentoring all of us through your works at Granity and the book itself has a number of characters in the book. Do you feel that the characters in the book you're drawing from personally teammates, mentors along the way? Yeah, it's a combination, a combination. So the coach himself, Rollaby Whizzenard, is somebody that was inspired by some of the coaches that I've had to pass, namely Phil Jackson. Right. Right, and the name Whizzenard actually was inspired from Phil. I mean, Phil was a big Zen guy. He'd go in a locker room, he's like burning sage and all sort of stuff. And I'm like, dude, you know, they might drug test us at any minute. Like, I don't know what you're putting in these incense, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, but he's a big Zen guy. And then another great mentor and a person I looked up to and studied a lot was John Wooden, who was known as the Wizard of Westwood. And so I took the Wizard of Westwood and the Zen guy and I combined those things and created Whizzenard. OK. All right. So a lot of it's inspired by those two coaches and Bill Russell as well. And then the kids themselves, yeah, there's a lot of me there. And there's also a lot of some of the teammates that I've had to pass. I pulled a lot of inspiration from my daughter's team that I coach now, 12 year old girls team. OK. And you'll see a lot of those same kind of characteristics within the characters. It was something you mentioned about how that try to instill these lessons in your children and they're getting tired of hearing those lessons. Right. But to be able to put them in the form of a story where you can emotionally invest in the characters in their journey and then learn from them through these narratives. It's a very powerful thing. And it's something that we've been discussing on the show for a while now. Yeah, we all have this hero's journey that we're on this movie that we're living. And it's amazing to be able to create a story that encapsulates your hero's journey and all the lessons you've learned along the way. Yeah. Thank you, man. No, it's it's it's, you know, it's funny when it comes to the art of creating, you have to have to kind of this left brain of this right brain approach of creativity. Right. But then, as you said, in the hero's journey, it does involve a lot of structure. Right. Right. So you also got to start. You got to be fundamentally sound when it comes to telling your story and make sure you hit the beats that are necessary, making sure you're taking the reader or the viewer through a journey of character growth. And so, you know, you got to sit down, you got to map it all out. You got to figure out what's going to happen not only in this book, but what are going to happen in subsequent books. Right. You know, and it's fun. It's fun mapping all that out, man. Is this something that that has been you've been working on for a while now that it's always been in the back of your mind? Yeah, it has been doing my last year of playing is when I wrote the whole world. OK. It's about 2,000 years of history. I sat down and thought about what it is that I wanted to create and how I wanted to create it and came up with the magic, the rules for the magic and how it relates to sports. Right. And and then from that, I started thinking of characters. I mean, you guys know, I mean, it all starts with the character. You can have the best plot in the world, the coolest looking world you know that anybody's ever seen. But if the characters aren't ringing true, it doesn't work. Right. If they're not relatable, it's not a great story. And I feel like one of the big lessons in this first book in the series is really the characters struggling to overcome their fears. Yeah, yeah. And your youth days in basketball, what were the biggest fears that you are struggling in overcoming? Well, you know, I learned at an early age from something actually has nothing to do with basketball, but everything to do with it. I was in a karate class and I was just starting out. I was a white belt. And for some reason, like we have these days during the week where you know, everybody kind of sits in a circle and you duke it out with another belt. You work on all the things that you're just working on. And so I was fairly talented, right? So the guy goes, OK, it's insane. All right, you're going to go up against this guy. This guy is a brown belt and he's like two years old. And I'm like, what the I'm not going to fight this dude, man. He crazy. Like, no, I'm not, you know, and now you have the head gear on. You got all this stuff on, right? You got foot gloves on the whole thing, right? And I was freaking out, completely freaking out. And he told me at the beginning of class so the whole class I'm freaking out. And so I wind up fighting this guy and I get my butt kicked, right? But I remember that was about eight years old. The car on the way home, I remember thinking that my imagination made it worse in my own head. It was going to be the worst thing ever that I actually fought him. And it wasn't. It's like, it was OK. And I did pretty I did OK. Right. But that taught me a very early lesson is that we can get in our own heads so much. We can psych ourselves out so much. We can almost talk ourselves into a fearful situation as opposed to just being and I've never forgotten that lesson. And in Muse, you touch on having to travel so much as a kid and really finding solace in basketball. Do you feel like your imagination was also playing a big part in your development in those days? Oh, my God, yes, because it involves playing a lot by yourself, right? You know, in Italy at the time, soccer was and still is. I mean, it's the best thing since sliced bread, right? And so you go to the park. There's not a lot of kids back then that wanted to play basketball, right? So I had a lot of room for imagination. And so on the shooting, I'm imagining at the time being in the forum. Playing at the Boston Garden, you know, here in the crowd, you know, acting as if I was the play by play announcer. And so there's certain was a lot of imagination there. Yeah. And I know a big part of that as well was identifying those weaknesses in your game and imagining some of the other players you looked up to and the skill set that you're hoping to develop. Yeah, you I watched a lot and I studied a lot, you know, at the time, I didn't think it was study. And it was just like, you know, I'd rather be doing nothing else. I wanted to watch Bird. I wanted to watch Magic, Alajuan, Barclay, you know, Robinson, Baylor and on and on and on and on. And I try to imitate those moves, right? You know, and my left hand was weak. I had to work on my left hand. That's what I did. And it was just fun. I just rather be doing nothing else. I think it's that where it becomes it's the obsession, right? It's like we wouldn't want to be doing anything else. And everything that we're doing in that moment is pure joy. And it takes us away from wherever we are and completely envelops us. But isn't that that's that's such a, you know, it's hard to find that thing that you love that much, isn't it? I mean, that that's kind of the key to this whole deal. Right. And for those of us that are really lucky, you can find what that thing is at a very early age. Other times it requires a lot more work. It requires a lot of trying and experiments. And when you find that thing, it's like, right? You don't have to wake up in the morning and psych yourself up. Like, oh, man, I got to do this today. All right, I got to get jazzed up. You know, like every morning you wake up, you're like, I can't wait. I can't wait. And that's like, you know, that's more than 80 percent of the battle. I think I think that also if you're able to find something like that when you're younger, that as you get older, you can understand that process and know what it's going to take for you to get focused into something. At least that's that's how it's been for us and discovering a lot of new stuff for ourselves. Yeah, I mean, having struggles early on creates that strength and resilience that you're going to depend on as you become an adult. Yeah, those that's actually extremely important, too, because it's part of the story as well, is that you don't run from those moments. Yeah, you don't run from them. You embrace them, right? You got to embrace the storms. You know what I mean? Yeah, the fears that we have, the moments of suffering. They're all part of the process. They're all part of growth and it's nature, right? You got to be able to handle those things, man. Now, obviously, we know a lot about your relationship with Phil over the years, two stints working together. How does it feel now that you're a coach and coaching your daughter's basketball team? You know, it's it's funny. I just said to a video, a clip of our girls playing is like a like a nine and a half, ten minute clip of the girls playing that I sent to them. And I just said, just to make you smile. And he watched it and he responded in a very typical, filled way, saying they they move the ball extremely well. They understand how to deploy the defense, right? Like very, like very matter of fact, you know, like really looking at the execution of how they format triangles, how they read angles or some stuff. And he said, you should be very, very proud. The girls are doing a great job. So I keep them involved in how the girls are progressing for sure. And as a teammate, you were known for being intense. Is that intensity waned with your children now and coaching them? No, it's different. So like as a player, the intensity comes from the action. Like you're on the court, you're entrenched in that kind of that combat. Right. As a coach, it's different. As a coach, my responsibility is to teach them how to fish. That's my responsibility. Give them the fundamentals, teach them how to think. And then when they go out and play, I let them coach themselves because they have to be able to problem solve. And when I see things that are incorrect, I just hold on to them and then we can work on them in practice. Right. So it's having the patience to allow them to go out there to think independently, to make mistakes and all this other stuff. And then you can teach them patiently, you know, in practice every day. It's funny. Johnny and I learned a new term called lawnmower parents. This idea of parents foreseeing the adversity and getting ahead of it before their children can even feel the adversity. No way. No. Yeah, I was going to say, sounds a lot different than the perspective you're bringing. No way. No. I think our job as parents is guidance, right? You allow your kids to go out there and to live. You allow them to make mistakes. And then you're kind of there to help guide them through that journey. Right. It's a journey that they have to take. It's inevitable. They have to go through this journey. I think it's our job to just try to try to help guide them through it. That's all. And you're famous for having an alter ego, Black Mamba and compartmentalizing what was going on in that part of your career personally so that when you stepped on the court, you were all business. And that alter ego changed the arc of your history, your career in basketball. That imagination with Black Mamba, it sounds to me, has been what's ignited this flame with Granity. Yeah, it's certainly part of it. You know, like I used to write ads a lot. Used to write ads. So I had an ad agency a long, long time ago and I wrote ads for Nike. My Nike ads, things of that nature. So writing and imagination was always a part. Storytelling was always there. And yeah. So the Black Mamba stuff all comes from that sort of imaginary world of creating something else, right? But I also learned from that, that even through imagination, things must come from truth. Right. Who am I on a basketball court? I'm this thing, right? So it has to be anchored in a form of truth. And that's what I try to do with what I'm creating now. And for the audience listening who hasn't had a chance to check out your book, we can pre-order it on Amazon, the Wizzner and Sirius. It's part of five. What are the biggest life lessons that you hope the audience takes away from these books? Well, the biggest journey that you'll see the characters take, which is really important for young men, right? Now, the rest of the novels are all for I have female protagonists because because of my daughters, you know what I mean? Like, I just can't help but write characters that are like based around my daughters. But for this series, I felt it was very important for young men because as young men, we are taught a very early age that any sign of vulnerability is a sign of weakness, right? Crying, that's weak. Don't do that. Right. And so I think it's very important for these young men to go through this journey of self-acceptance, first and foremost, right? Because there are a lot of things that are personally holding them back that they've buried either consciously or subconsciously, that's holding them back from reaching their full potential as young men and as athletes. And until you square with those, you'll never hit that full stride. So the first one is a really big, important story about self-acceptance. And then from that self-acceptance, it teaches you empathy and compassion because even though I can't see what magical journey you just went on, I know that you've gone through one because I have as well. So that helps me better understand and relate to others. And then we'll progress to being able to have the bravery to share what it is, what journey it is that you've just been on. And with the relationships with your teammates that you drew from in this book and now looking at relationships off the court, do you feel like you've changed the way that you handle some of your friendships or relationships? Obviously, you're well known for your intensity in the locker room. Yes. Yes. I've had to mature as my playing days went on because you start understanding that there are lives outside of the game. Right. There are personal things that happen in people's lives that are manifesting themselves through the game. And as a good teammate, I had to understand that and say, OK, let me listen to these guys. Let me let me get a better sense for who they are as people because that's that's really the true way to bring out the best in somebody else is to first understand that person right where they're coming from. Exactly. Was was there a point in your career that brought that lesson to the forefront where you realized that you were going to have to open up to these these other stories and to the to your teammates and what they have going on having having children. Yeah, that's because you have to think outside of yourself, you have an additional you have a responsibility and you know, when you have kids, it's like this responsibility is the most important thing in the world. Right. And how do you raise? How do you raise a young child? You know, what do you do? So you become consumed with their life. You become consumed with trying to provide them with proper guidance and proper care and it changes you. It changes you as a person, man, and it makes you think more outwardly versus inwardly. And you talk a lot in in use about the sacrifices that were made throughout your career, whether it's not spending time with your family, not spending time with your friends, not going on vacations, those famous workouts that your teammates dreaded in that, you know, hard work gets us there part of the way. But to achieve greatness, especially now, we look everywhere, hustle this, hustle that work hard. What else is it that that goes beyond just the hard work, the effort? Well, it's it's trying to balance and win all facets of life. It's really hard to do, right? Like, how do you succeed at your craft? But how do you also have a stable family? Right. You know, I mean, that's like the never. That's the that's the gazillion dollar question. How do you balance those two things, man? And and I think that's the part that gets missed a lot. I mean, we all talk about the hard work. We all talk about, OK, be this, be that, be this, be that. But what I figured out is I got older. It's not about working hard in terms of putting in long hours, but it's about working smart. It's about working smart. When you work smart, it gives you more time to be able to spend with your family, right? And have that consistency because it's important to win all facets, man. And as we talk about this whole universe that you've created, what are you most excited about happening in this book series? Watching how young children respond to, you know, particularly young athletes, like I was a young athlete, it was like, you'd have to pin me down to give me to read a book. Right. You know, I was like, I want to run. I want to play. It's got nothing to do with me. I don't, you know. So I think finally creating something in the market that is centered around young athletes, finally, something that they can sit down and say, OK, not only am I learning a life lesson from this, which we all know kids don't really care about, right? They care about having fun while you're consuming content and that it's centered around something that they actually enjoyed doing and do. Right. So seeing their reactions to it is what I'm really looking forward to. And how did your kids react to the book? Did they put it down? No, they loved it. So like I wrote it with them. You know, they were part of the process come from them, the dialogue, the conversation between each other. I mean, that's like a lot of our conversations and how we talk in the same sense of humor and cadence. So a great deal of all of my series are inspired by my children. So and are there any teammates that made it into the book and in characters that you're yeah, they're bits and pieces of them, certainly. I mean, you know, I remember having a teammate who could work and working on his shot all day long. But as soon as a game starts, couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Or I had a teammate that, you know, practice starts at 1030. They show up at 1030. All right, practices at one, they leave at one. Right. And conventional wisdom would say, OK, call him a lazy bum and get him out of here, you know what I mean? But what you come to find out is that there are actually other things that that are truly the reason why he doesn't want to apply himself and do extra work because he's more so afraid of the failure. Like if I really put myself into this thing, 110 percent, and it's still not good enough, then how do I feel about myself? Right. Right. So there's a there's a lot of things that I picked up and put into the book. And having a career, a professional career, especially that starts at such a young age and being forced into the spotlight. I know one of the things that Johnny and I talk a lot on the shows, how to foster the right relationships with positive, supportive people and how to weed out the negative relationships and negative influences. And obviously, some of your stature is going to have people from all walks of life wanting a piece of you. How do you assemble that inner circle of people that you trust, whether it's a project like this book or in other areas of life? Yeah, you know, the people, you know, you can feel it. So people have a certain energy about them when they're people in the world that are focused and like have a I wake up in the morning with a purpose. This is what I'm doing. You can feel that energy or you can feel it because it's a kindred spirit. So those are the people that I tend to work with a lot. And if you don't have that, I can sense it. I can sense it. But we're also very disciplined. If you're a person that's very distracted, hanging around the wrong crowd, not having that sense of purpose, we don't want to be around it. We don't want to be around it because that stuff will bring you down, man. Stuff will bring you down. So we're very, very disciplined, very, very focused on finding, you know, writers, editors, story artists. You name it that have a like true, true passion for what it is that they do. I think you mentioned earlier of being excited to get up every day to go to get after it. That is something that you're going to be able to see in people. I mean, how they approach their day, how how how they feel about getting getting out there, how what time are they going to sleep to be prepared to take it on? And it certainly is we've been discussing it on the show. If if you're afraid to go to bed because of what you're dreading the next day, that next day should be spent in fixing that. Right. Right. Right. Right. Versus hiding from it. Right. So let me just stay in the bed. Stay in the bed. It'll pass on its own. No, not who we want around us. No, no, no, you you claim that you viewed the Achilles injury as your Mount Everest, and that's a fascinating mindset. Do you feel throughout your career, you had to create these Mount Everest in your mind to really reach that greatness? Well, yeah, I mean, you have winning championship when you start the season. That's the mountain. Right. Now that mountain is made up of a million little steps, right, and little goals along the way. But yeah, I certainly do that. You establish your mountain. And then after that, you don't look to the summit. Forget about it. You can't even see it. Just focus on the next step in front of you, right? You put one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. And you just keep your head down. You keep working, you keep working, you keep working. The next thing you know, you find yourself at the top of the mountain. And what's your your Mount Everest right now? Right now is the stories building the studio. How do we do that? Piece by piece. And, you know, some days and I'll sit in office, I'm like, man, this is such a long journey, long journey. You say, just focus on the basics. What are the basics? The Wizz and Art series, novels done, bring it to market. What are those steps? Right. The other not. So the three novels that we're releasing this year are all finished. They're all finished. So now it's about executing. Right. It's about execution. And surrounding yourself with the team members who will execute. See, that's the beautiful thing is that we've been very, very fortunate to be able to do that. We have a great team. We have a great team. And so you just kind of, you know, you trust the process, you trust their creativity and you just turn them loose. I mean, it's really my job to make sure that they're pushing themselves every single day. So when I say, you know, you have no restrictions on creativity, be as creative as you want in design and, you know, right, whatever. And oh, OK. And then they come back and go, is this OK? I'm like, no, no, I don't think you're understanding me. You know, I am not a designer, right? You have to tell me, is this the best work you can do? If it is awesome, right? So you got to hold yourself accountable. But that's what we're going through now. And it's fun. Yeah, it's certainly a different challenge than the athletic pursuits earlier in your career. When when you were facing retirement, realizing that this was going to be behind you, what were you you thinking about the second act in your career? Well, you know, I was thinking all the wrong stuff. Like, all right, what's the best? What's the biggest industry I can get into? All right. Right. How can we generate the most revenue sort of thing? Wrong. And I kept running into a dead end. I don't know what I'm going to do. I wake up every morning, I don't know what I'm going to do. Finally, I said, OK, what is it that you love to do? I love to tell stories. Love it. Love it. All right. So what the heck does that mean? Right. So my wife asked me, all right, what are you going to do now? So I'm going to be a storyteller. She goes, all right. So let me get this straight. So when we fill out a form where Natalia is at school, she has to fill out a form. It says, what is your dad's occupation? She's going to write storyteller. Is that what you're telling me right now? I'm like, yeah, I guess. I mean, it worked well for Walt, I guess. I don't know. She's like, you are not Walt Disney. Yeah, not yet. You get but you get the idea. And so once I made that decision, then everything became about that. How do we just tell stories that are going to inspire another generation of athletes? I love that. I mean, we, our last month, each month we do a different theme. The last month was happiness and it's about finding passions and waking up to be excited to go out there and how that's going to happen. Did you go through a time where as you were waking up, as you were going through the day like, this is not working. I'm not happy. This is, because I'm not, I'm obviously not doing what I should be doing. Yeah, for my last season of playing basketball, yes. And that's when I knew it was time to retire. You know what I mean? Like that moment, I had that. And I was like, all right, time to hang it up, not look back. All right, so that's how that decision was made. And so, but now, no, like I was going through the whole year, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. Yeah. You know, dear basketball producing that, right? So like the day after my last game, I was on a phone call with John Williams and Glen Keane, working on the production for Dear Basketball. So it was like, after one thing, we just moved right to the next. Right on. And on we go. And do you find yourself being a perfectionist and like, oh, I'm not sure I can release this yet. I'm not sure it's right in this creative process. Obviously it's a lot different than working on a jumper. For writing, yes. So like going every single, going over all the words, right? So like Dear Basketball, for example, when I wrote that, I truly did follow the hero's journey. I just, I just did it in five minutes, right? So if you look at the structure of the piece that I wrote, you'll see the same thing. You'll see the same thing. You see the call to adventure. You'll see all of that stuff in there. And just hitting all those beats in a five minute span. But I was an absolute perfectionist when it came to that. Like every word must be well cared for. The rhythm, the cadence, the one thing I did know is I wanted to end it with a like five, four, three, two, one. Because in my mind, I was like, John Williams is going to crush that. He is going to crush it. I don't know how, but I just know he will. You know, like that sort of thing. And, but then after that, you know, you work with people that are the same way. Like, I mean, John Williams, you know, and Glyn Keane are perfectionists at what they do. So you just, just step back and let them be them. That's all. And I feel that with all of this going on, creative and raising a family, what do you do with your free time now outside of those two aviaries? Well, I coach my daughter's basketball team. No, but outside of that, like we'll do a lot of things together as a family. Like we love going to movies. We love going to shows. We love trying new restaurants and, you know, sitting at home and playing Uno. We're a big Uno family. Okay, family card games. Yeah, yeah, we love that sort of stuff or like play headbands and you know. So we just try to do fun things with each other, which becomes harder and harder because the kid's schedules busier than mine. Yeah. You know, but we try to find those, those kind of intimate moments as a family. And how does the inner family competition work? Obviously you're known for being tenaciously competitive. Man, listen, if you think like, you know, people that watch my kids play sports and say, okay, really competitive. And they say, oh yeah, well, I wonder why. I'm say, yeah, because you ever met their mama. But that's as every bit as competitive as I am when it comes to that stuff, man. I won't sit next to her when it comes to Uno. If I got to make her pick up two or pick up. Oh yeah. Oh no, it's not going to be good. That famous look you gave on the court, you're getting back now in Uno. She gets to me with the eyebrow. Oh. She's got that eyebrow. And you know that thing pops up. You're like, you know what? Hey, Gigi, you want to switch seats? Switch seats, you can place your mother. Now mentorship was a huge part of your basketball career. Who do you consider mentors now in this second act? You know, when I first had the idea of starting a studio, the first person I spoke to was Oprah and how she went about building Harpa. And she was very patient with me and we sat on the phone for about an hour and a half. And she walked me through her journey of how she built it. Other great mentors are people like Shonda Rhimes, who is the empire that she's built over the years. And talking about character development and how to write story and how to build teams and how to grow teams. Because the other thing is bringing in young writers and allowing young writers to develop and all of a sudden they become show runners and all this stuff. And how do you do that? Johnny Ives from Apple, Tim Cook. And I'll pick up the phone and call them when it comes to structure of the company. How do you create a company that is moving in one direction versus a company that is fractured and siloed and all that sort of stuff. I've been very, very lucky to have some great mentors in my life. Debbie Allen's another one. Very, very lucky. And are you actively mentoring any of the young basketball players in the league? Yeah, so I'll bring a lot of young guys that come out in the summertime and spend two, three days, some cases a week. And we'll work together every single day. And during the season I'll get phone calls or I'll get text messages every now and then. Kyrie Irving, James Harden, all these guys. I want me to take a look at a piece of film or just have a question just about team dynamics and challenges that they may be facing. Cause you know, 20 years I pretty much, I've seen a lot. Yeah, I've seen a lot. So I try to talk to the guys as much as I can. Giannis is another one. So yeah, I try to spend enough much time as I can with those guys. I was curious in that studio when everyone's working and doing the thing and trying to create a creative atmosphere. Do you feel yourself bringing in some of the fills and into that room to let everyone do their thing? Yeah, you know, not yet. I haven't had an incident going yet. We already kind of have that. You get certain creative people and they're kind of doing that on their own anyway. So for me it's just constantly reinforcing that we are a creative company and everything that we invest, things that we build is all centered around making sure the story is king. Making sure the design elements. We try to do everything to keep you immersed into the story. But when you see the book, I love telling this because it just shows how maniacal we are. I mean, we spent two weeks on designing the barcode on the book. Just the barcode, just the barcode because we didn't want to create something that pulled you out of the story even if it is barcode. Right? Everything must be from this world. Every little detail. Everything. I love it. Thank you for joining us. We really appreciate it. It's been an honor. And we're excited to catch the rest of the series and see where the Wizzner series goes. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely.