Remembering basketball superstar Kobe Bryant with our March 20, 2000 cover story. 'He's very smart and he has tremendous instincts on the court and in business,' said Arn Tellem, Kobe Bryant's agent at the time
toys earn him more each year than he makes for shooting hoops. Slang? Please. Now he writes it. His first rap album, Visions, will soon be released by Columbia Records.
It also positions the player-owner as an ideal worldwide endorser."Markets are spreading globally," he says, sounding more like a business school student than a six-and-a-half-foot, 215-pound shooting guard."It gives me gives me a lot of leverage in business deals." Kobe played that leverage perfectly with Upper Deck, the sports trading card and collectibles company. It wanted Bryant as a spokesman to help build its business in the U.S. and Europe.
How does a handsome 21-year-old deal with being a star in a city of stars? By being focused. He was so determined to get a record deal that for the past three years, no matter where he was -- on the team plane, in hotel rooms, or at home -- he worked on writing rhymes and lyrics."He's very smart and he has tremendous instincts on the court and in business," says Arn Tellem, Bryant's agent.
Besides his team ownership, Bryant has an equity stake in Broadband Sports, which manages fan Web sites for professional athletes, and his joint venture with Columbia calls for him to produce a series of artists."After the music is solid we'd like to move into producing other stuff, like sitcoms and films," says Jerrod Washington, who is married to the oldest of Bryant's two sisters and serves as executive vice president of Kobe Family Entertainment, Kobe's showbiz company.
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