Kyrie Irving embraced his “mamba mentality” in the NBA Finals. Irving was playing to win. Kyrie strung together multiple nearly flawless games during the Finals, and helped lead his team to a championship. In a recent interview, Kyrie revealed that he and NBA legend Kobe Bryant have a strong relationship, and that he FaceTimed him after winning the NBA Championship.
Kyrie spoke to Jeffrey Eisenbrand of ThePostGame:
“I actually FaceTimed Kobe after the game as soon as I got in the locker room. Other than seeing my dad and my sister right after we won,FaceTiming him was just a great thing, knowing how he has won five and I just won my first. Then realizing how hard it is just to win one, my respect for him is already high, but it went to another level knowing that he’s got five of them. I’m trying to get a second one.”
Kyrie also spoke on how often he and Kobe communicated during the Finals:
[Bryant] was telling me congrats. I had been speaking to him throughout the entire playoffs and during the season. During the Finals, we didn’t really talk as much, because for me, I wanted to experience it full on, and if I needed his help, I would reach out to him. He would send me some texts here and there, but mainly he kind of let me be, and let me grow into my own space.
If you were a young player in the NBA, who would you want to be your mentor? Kyrie has the perfect mentor in Bryant. Irving’s game has multiple similarities to Bryant’s, and he is lucky enough to also play with NBA great LeBron James. Kyrie is learning from two of the best players to ever play basketball, and nobody knows what he will be able to do with that.
