Brian Shaw and Kobe Bryant won three championships together for the Los Angeles Lakers, but their connection goes back much further. Shaw played in Italy in 1989-90, where he became teammates with Joe “Jellybean” Bryant and occasionally met 11-year-old Kobe.

Fast forward six years and Shaw crossed paths with the younger Bryant again. This time, however, the latter was no longer the grade-school student he once was. He was just as tall as Shaw and carried himself with a swagger that belied his age.

Shaw never forgot that exchange because he could not believe the words coming out of the teenager’s mouth.

“Jellybean brought him to the finals when we were in Orlando, ’95,” Shaw said, squinting a bit, trying to get the year right. “He walks up to me with a whole bunch of confidence. You remember me? I said, ‘Yeah, yeah. I can’t believe you’re looking at me eye to eye. What grade are you in now?’ He said, ‘I just finished the 11th grade. I was thinking about going hardship and skipping my senior year in high school.’ No BS.”

“I didn’t know anything about him as far as basketball, but I’m like, in my head, I’m going, ‘Man, get TF out of here,'” added the Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach.

Why was Kobe in a rush to take his talents to the NBA?

Bryant forewent that plan and ended up returning to Lower Merion to finish out his high school tenure. Then, he quickly set the wheels in motion for his grand scheme of playing in the big league.

Why was Bryant in such a rush?

Well, Shaw’s version of events matched author Roland Lazenby’s account of why Kobe couldn’t wait to join the NBA. According to Lazenby, Bryant’s parents were in dire financial need, which is why he was determined to go straight to the pros.

Shaw mentioned the “hardship” rule, a long-standing NBA regulation spurred by a Supreme Court decision that allows college players to forgo their remaining years of eligibility and join the draft due to “financial condition, his family, his academic record, or lack of it, and his ability to obtain employment in another field.”

In the history of the NBA, two high school players, Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby, were granted the hardship exception. They were declared eligible for the 1975 draft, with Dawkins going fifth overall and Willoughby in the second round.

On the other hand, Bryant may have been itching to go pro for a competitive reason. According to John Salley, he wanted to play Michael Jordan before he retired and use him as a barometer for his own development. Whatever drove his urgency, it ultimately set him on the course he wanted.

Young Kobe already had a killer’s mentality

Shaw never met an 11th-grader with that much confidence in his ability that he thought he could go straight to the NBA.

If that plan had pushed through, Bryant may have been in for a rude awakening, but just having the conviction to even consider it said everything about his mindset. That fearlessness, unrealistic or not, was the same quality that later made him a Lakers icon.

Shaw and Bryant became teammates later on, and unsurprisingly, that killer instinct did not go anywhere.

Brian recalled inviting Kobe to go fishing, but the latter couldn’t make it. So, Shaw messaged him pictures of sharks and manta rays he caught to show his younger teammate what he had missed.

“He said, ‘What’d you do with ’em?’ I said, ‘I just took a picture with them and I just throw them back in the water and let ’em go. He said, ‘Why’d you do that?… You’re supposed to kill ’em… They got caught. That’s what they a-s get for getting caught.’ In a nutshell, that’s his mentality,” Shaw recalled with a chuckle.

Shaw’s encounters with Bryant painted a clear picture of who he was from the start. The teenager who dared to talk about skipping his senior year was the same young pro who treated fishing photos like proof of a competition. Some may call it stubbornness or defiance, but it’s the very thread that tied his successful basketball journey together.