{"id":466253,"date":"2026-02-08T10:29:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/466253\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T10:29:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T10:29:08","slug":"nba-star-metta-world-peace-says-kobe-bryant-taught-him-that-someone-else-is-always-working-harder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/466253\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA star Metta World Peace says Kobe Bryant taught him that someone else is always working harder"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA champion Metta World Peace (previously known as Ron Artest) has a warning for anyone who thinks they\u2019re a hard worker: there\u2019s probably someone\u2014maybe even on your team\u2014willing to work even harder than you. It\u2019s a career lesson he learnt from Kobe Bryant.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Fortune\u2019s Orianna Rosa Royle at Web Summit Qatar, World Peace revealed that he had heard the late Los Angeles Lakers basketball player was grinding hard at the gym before long days of grueling training.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So one day, World Peace showed up to the gym at 8 a.m. to see if the rumours were true. \u201cI got to the gym and I said, let me see if Kobe is really in the gym.\u201d<\/p>\n

He arrived at 8 a.m.\u2014what he considered early\u2014and Bryant wasn\u2019t mid-set or cooling down. He already leaving.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was all showered up. He was done,\u201d the 46-year-old recalled. \u201cAnd I thought I was working hard!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The next day, he went back at 5:30 a.m. to catch a firsthand glimpse of just how far Bryant was willing to go to be one of basketball\u2019s greatest players, including five NBA championships, 18 All-Star selections, and the 2008 MVP award, which he received the year before World Peace joined the team.<\/p>\n

The takeaway? High performance is relative. No matter how early you start or how many hours you put in, someone else will be willing to do more. <\/p>\n

Or as World Peace put it: \u201cThere\u2019s always somebody out there working harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Success is simply years of hard work that have compounded<\/p>\n

For World Peace, the lesson wasn\u2019t just about training. It was a reminder that success, on or off the court, is built through patience and daily consistency.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started playing basketball at eight years old. I went pro at 19. Then it took me another 17 years to become a legend,\u201d he told Fortune, adding that he took that mindset into his new career as an entrepreneur. The sports star recently teamed up with former Boost Mobile CEO Stephen Stokols to launch a $100 million sport-tech venture fund, Tru Skye Ventures.<\/p>\n

\"\"NBA champion Metta World Peace (previously known as Ron Artest) and Tru Skye Ventures CEO Stephen Stokols spoke to Fortune\u2019s Orianna Rosa Royle at Web Summit Qatar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I got into entrepreneurship, private equity, venture, and when times got tough, I just told myself, well, it took me 10 years to actually become a pro,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI retired at 35 years old, so I said it\u2019d take me 10 years to get this off the ground, and then also, then if I want to be a legendary it\u2019s going to take another 17 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the going gets tough or momentum stalls, he keeps that mantra<\/a> to be patient in his \u201cback pocket.\u201d It\u2019s been just over a decade since he retired from basketball, and that patience is beginning to show returns. \u201cNow, here we are, competing against the Michael Jordans of business the space,\u201d World Peace beamed.<\/p>\n

Work-life balance is a lie, the NBA champion and Tru Skye Ventures CEO agree<\/p>\n

That same long-term mindset also shapes how the former basketball player views work-life balance. He doesn\u2019t believe in clean separations between the two, or in the idea that high performance can be neatly contained within office hours. He even opted to bring his kids to work, including to a recent CNN<\/a> interview.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s something he and his business partner, Stokols, firmly agree on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t give a s\u2014 about work-life balance,<\/a>\u201d the CEO, founder, and investor joked on stage. \u201cI think it\u2019s a tough balance because at the end of the day, if you\u2019re a startup\u2014and I started my own company\u2014there is a certain level of passion and work you have to put in. It\u2019s more than a 9-to-5.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite increased desire for work-life, with Gen Z workers<\/a> even willing to walk out on firms that don\u2019t provide it, that reality is something Stokols is upfront about.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re recruiting, you\u2019re trying to be honest about the fact that this is not a 9-to-5. I might hit you up on Slack or text you at 11 p.m.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Stokols, rejecting work-life balance isn\u2019t about working endlessly, but about working deliberately. He insists you won\u2019t catch him texting out of hours unless it\u2019s urgent, and tries not to waste energy on superficial problems, reserving focus for the ones that actually matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can sit there and lie in bed, lose three hours of sleep thinking about a problem,\u201d Stokols said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not going to get fixed that night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo sometimes it\u2019s about saying, nothing\u2019s going to happen tonight. I\u2019m going to go to sleep. Get a good night, and then I\u2019ll see if it\u2019s still a problem in the morning,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd half the time, some of those problems just go away on their own anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA champion Metta World Peace (previously known as Ron Artest) has a warning for anyone who thinks they\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[10323,64,63,726,8776,8777,8779,447,13800,10109,590,3324,85,6602],"class_list":{"0":"post-466253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-athletes","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-career-advancement","13":"tag-career-advice","14":"tag-careers","15":"tag-celebrities","16":"tag-kobe-bryant","17":"tag-national-basketball-association","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-productivity","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-work-life-balance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}