That’s how Kobe Bryant came into the NBA as a youngster, making it plain that he was coming for Michael Jordan’s throne even while Jordan was still playing and was still the gold standard by which all NBA players were to be judged.
He walked like him, talked like him, taking “Be Like Mike” to a whole other level. It was almost an annoyance, because we wondered what the real Kobe Bryant was like, not the Jordan facsimile.
There were all these physical similarities and other attributes that couldn’t be ignored, gifts he possessed that were, in some ways, equal to Jordan’s.