When facing adversity, NBA players tend to point fingers. More often than not, those fingers point at others. The blame game usually lands on teammates, head coaches or, the referees.
Of course, you can do that. The thing is, it won’t get you very far. You’ll go a lot further if you take another route. What did that route look like for Kobe Bryant? The late Los Angeles Lakers legend explained it himself back in 2018.
Kobe’s response to setbacks
Bryant’s mentality? What hasn’t been said about it, really. If there’s one thing that’s often missed, though, it’s how the Hall of Fame swingman dealt with things when they didn’t go his way.
Again, there are plenty of accounts of how Kobe performed at his very best. Workaholic habits. Obsessive attention to detail, no less. Still, even the Black Mamba was mortal and that meant there were moments when he missed his targets.
What usually happens then? Some get angry. At those around them. Or at themselves. Much of that stems from frustration. The kind that comes from putting in the work. Doing everything you can. And still not seeing the results you wanted.
That’s where Kobe’s stance comes in.
For the 2008 MVP, this is when you actually need to step back and look at the bigger picture. Do that, he remarked during his appearance on “The Corp,” and you’ll see that everyone is solving a puzzle. Each one is “constructed differently.”
Following Bryant’s logic, it doesn’t make sense to worry about what someone else’s puzzle looks like or how they’re solving it. That only makes you prone to excuses. The real message is about accountability. It’s about adapting to your own situation. If you truly wanted to do that, the 18-time All-Star believed nothing was stopping you in the long run.
“If you really have an obsession to figure it out, you will figure it out,”
Kobe’s response to setbacks
Want to see how well that puzzle analogy holds up? Look at Bryant’s own ascent in the league.
He was only 18 at the time. One of just a handful of players to jump to the NBA straight out of high school. That background? It made finding his footing on the big stage much harder than it was for most others. His path was unusual. That said, looking left or right whenever things got bumpy never made much sense. Kobe himself made that very point.
“A.I.’s situation when he came into the league was different than mine. Mike’s situation in Chicago was different than mine, right?” he pointed out decades later.
Bryant was talking about Allen Iverson and Michael Jordan. The point was simple enough. As he put it, they, just like everybody else, had a “different puzzle.” Your own puzzle? Figuring it out for yourself is the only thing that actually counts.
As for his own struggles, there were quite a few, especially early on. Bryant started only seven regular-season games combined in his first two seasons with the Lakers. These days, he’s remembered as one of the deadliest scorers the game has ever seen. Back then, though, he had his own “airball game.”
It came in Game 5 of the 1997 Western Conference semifinals. A young Bryant airballed shot after shot down the stretch against the Utah Jazz.
The Philly native, however, didn’t blame anyone afterward. Instead, he went straight back to work. That meant showing up at the gym at the same time the janitor opened up. And staying there “until the sun came up.”
Copyright 2026 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This story was originally published September 18, 2026 at 5:55 PM.