Kobe Bryant was murdering some of the best players in college basketball in secret pickup games at UCLA when he was only 17 years old ... so says Jaleel White who witnessed it himself!!!
Here's the deal ... Jaleel was on the "TMZ Sports" TV show where he reacted to Kobe's Steve Urkel slam poetry reading (he loved it!). He also told us a pretty great Kobe tale.
"I was attending UCLA when Kobe moved from Philadelphia to L.A.," White said.
"So, he used to hang out at UCLA a lot and I would watch him play our UCLA basketball team .