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Lakers News: LA Champ Dishes On Kobe Bryant's Practice Ethos

You may not be surprised.

Longtime Los Angeles Lakers combo forward A.C. Green, who won his three titles with LA across two very distinct championship eras, has the experience and distance from his 16-year playing career to speak with some authority on his Hall of Fame teammates.

During a must-listen new interview with Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson on the latter's Scoop B Selects series (via YouTube Selects), the 6'9" "Iron Man" spoke at length about the intensity of his most intense teammate: five-time champion and 2008 MVP shooting guard Kobe Bryant.

"Uhhh…. A BEAST!" Green exclaimed. "You know, people were so used to him during a game and turning on to a certain level -- competitive always and ready to get at somebody but he was like that in practice! He was one that when Phil [Jackson] said, Okay. We’re going to have a short scrimmage… he’s already ready to go up in your chest and the funny thing about Kobe was that he was ALWAYS game mode." 

"Game mode, game action and you loved that about him and I loved the fact that more than anything else what he and I talked about was him wanting to marry Vanessa and to me that was special because they obviously had a special relationship," Green continued.

The whole interview is well worth hearing in full:

Green was selected out of Oregon State with the No. 23 pick in the 1985 by then-LA team president Jerry West. He won titles with the Lakers in 1987, 1988 and 2000. He was named to his lone All-Star team while with Los Angeles in 1990. Across 1278 career regular season games, he holds averages of 9.6 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.1 assists and 0.8 steals per bout.

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