Kobe Bryant was so singularly focused on greatness that he once commandeered an assistant coach to fight him on a practice court at the Suns arena in downtown Phoenix.
Many of the details, such as the exact date, have been lost to time, but Brian Shaw remembers the broad strokes vividly.
Shaw was a young assistant coach on the Lakers staff under Phil Jackson. It was somewhere around 2006 or 2007, during a lull in Los Angeles title runs, and a frustrated Kobe Bryant had been spending too much time complaining to the officials over missed calls.