Kobe Bryant Recalls Trash Talk-Filled Rookie Showdown Against Michael Jordan in Resurfaced Video

A video of Kobe Bryant has recently resurfaced, which shows him engaging in a fair amount of [...]

By Christian Long

A video of Kobe Bryant has recently resurfaced, which shows him engaging in a fair amount of trash-talking directed towards Michael Jordan. In the clip, which was shared by Twitter user @Oldskoolbball1 on Friday, showed Bryant recalling his rookie year in the NBA, and his first encounter with Jordan, who was already a legend. It turned out that his expectations of Jordan were blown away in his first face-to-face encounter.

"I've seen him pure wet away from the screen so many times, and every time I saw, [I thought] 'I'm gonna f- that one, just force him over the screen," Bryant says in the clip. "Sure as s-, he leaned down like he was going over the screen and the s- looked so believable. It really did, I thought he was going over the screen."

"There's no way that motherf-er spun so fast baseline, [that] he was dunking the ball before I knew what the hell happened," Bryant recalled.

"I was 18 and I was, like, 'Oh, s-, that was pretty f-in' cool,'" Bryant continued. "And then, running back down the court, he was like, 'A lot faster in person, isn't it?"

The user also posted an extended version of the clip on their YouTube page, which you can watch in full here.

Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were both killed in a helicopter crash outside Calabasas, California on Jan. 26. On Monday, a Celebration of Life was held at Staples Center in Los Angeles to commemorate their lives.

Among the speakers, Jordan gave a tearful eulogy to both the late NBA star and his daughter, saying that he was "grateful to be here to honor Gigi and celebrate the gift that Kobe gave us all."

"In the game of basketball, in life, as a parent, Kobe left nothing in the tank," Jordan continued. "He left it all on the floor. Maybe it surprised people that Kobe and I were very close friends, but we were very close friends. Kobe was my dear friend. He was like a little brother. Everyone always wanted to talk about the comparisons between he and I. I just wanted to talk about Kobe."

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