“I just thought he was so crazy for saying that.”
During Monday night's edition of "The Jump" on ESPN, Tracy McGrady recalled one of the chilling things that Kobe Bryant had told him years ago. McGrady, who made the leap from high school to the NBA just one year after Kobe did, explained that Bryant always used to say that he wanted to die young and be immortalized.
“He used to say all the time, ‘I want to die young,’” McGrady said of Bryant. “He used to say ‘I want to die young. I want to be immortalized. I want to have my career be better than ’s, and I want to die young.’
“I just thought he was so crazy for saying that.”
When asked by ESPN's Rachel Nichols, McGrady clarified that Kobe's comments came during his younger days, well before he was a father of four daughters. Says McGrady, "Clearly that statement was way before kid. I’m sure that when he had kids, he didn’t have the mindset.”
Check out the full clip in the video embedded below.