Byron Scott says that Kobe Bryant would lift at 4am, come back and make 500 shots, do a full practice, then work out again at night, and says Kobe told him he did that because over the course of five years the gap would become impossible to close for his competition “There’s three people in my lifetime that I admired on how hard they worked: Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Kobe Bryant. His was legendary. Kobe, as far as he never worked out just once a day. He would get up at 4 in the morning, or he’d say, ‘Meet me at the gym at 4 in the morning,’ and he would work out for two, three hours lifting because he knew he had to get stronger, had to get bigger.” “Then he would go eat breakfast, and then he’d come back and he’d make 500 shots, so he’d be there another two hours. Then he’d get ready for practice. He’d go through a two-and-a-half-hour, three-hour practice like it’s nothing. Then he’d go have lunch, chill out for another hour, then he’d come back at night and work out again.” “And it was crazy to me because his method of it was scientific. He was like, ‘B, if I work out three times a day and all these other guys who are so-called great players work out just for practice, they just work out that one time a day, over a five-year period they can’t catch me. I’ve worked out that much. I’ve worked on my body, I’ve worked on my footwork, I’ve worked on my shot, so five, ten years from now they can’t catch me. They’re that far behind.’” “I never thought about it until he explained it to me. I was a guy that in the summertime, go to the gym, lift weights, go to the track, run for two hours, then go play — and that’s equivalent to three times a day. But I never thought of it or put it in the type of method that he was talking about.” “I just thought it was ironic that a young man got it that quickly. He understood that if I worked out harder and longer and more than the guy who’s supposed to be on my level, sooner or later he won’t be on my level anymore. Kobe was extremely intelligent. He just said, ‘Scientifically, if I do this, you can’t catch me.’ And he was right. It worked.”

Charles Barkley says that Michael Jordan once gave him financial advice during a round of golf centered around taking stock options from Nike instead of cash, and says he followed his advice and it ended up making him $50,000,000 “So I wore 32 one year, but I called Michael and I said, ‘Hey, send me a pair of shoes. I just want to tell you how much I appreciate everything you did for me, giving me that advice on that Nike stock that made me $30 million.’” “Because at the time I was making about $3 million a year, and we were playing golf, and he said, ‘Chuck, I was talking to somebody. So I want you to quit taking $3 million. Take a million and take the other $2 million in stock options.’” “So I called my people and said, ‘Hey, Michael told me to do this,’ because Mike’s always been a brilliant businessman. And they’re like, ‘This is risky. You think he’s going to be that great?’” “I said, ‘Man, I ain’t never seen nobody like that dude,’ because I had met him at the Olympic trials. I said, ‘He’s going to be amazing.’” “And we did it. And like I said, I ended up probably making, seriously, another $50 million, to be honest with you.”