Did Kobe Help Giannis Antetokounmpo And Luka Doncic Win NBA Honors?

2018-19 NBA Season MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo and 2018-19 Rookie of the Year Luka Doncic were both once connected to NBA legend Kobe Bryant.

Antetokounmpo was crowned this year’s season MVP. And right after winning the league’s most prestigious award, the Greek Freak can’t seem to forget what the legend Kobe Bryant contributed to his greatest achievement.

It all started back when Bryant was throwing tweets around the NBA community as part of a Nike promotion. Specifically, he sent out challenges to random NBA players, particularly stars, with the phrase #MambaMentality.

While Kobe was sending out challenges on social media, Giannis kind of felt left out and called out Bryant to include him too. As a response, Bryant gave Giannis three letters, MVP, USA Today reported.

And now, the 24-year-old Bucks superstar has already accomplished Bryant’s challenge, but the Laker legend appears to have more to offer the young MVP.

After congratulating Giannis for winning the MVP honors, Bryant followed it up with an even bigger challenge: an NBA championship.

From the looks of how things are going, it seems that Giannis has been fuelled by Kobe’s challenges and is up for some more. And now that Giannis has already accomplished the first, it is expected that he would be eager to prove to the legend that he can achieve the next one.

Should Giannis win a championship in the future, it would not be surprising for Kobe to be linked with it. In fact, as early as now, the Greek Freak is already vocal about it and mentioned Kobe during a post-conference interview, saying that the five-time NBA champ “started the flame.”

Aside from Giannis, another NBA sensation who took home an NBA award happen to also be connected with Kobe in the past. Dallas Mavericks rising star Luka Doncic won the 2019 NBA Rookie of the Year and appears to have been influenced by Mamba Mentality as well.

Last year, Doncic posted a photo of him and Kobe in what appears to be a training session. As expected, sources claim that the legend may have taught the 20-year-old Mavs star some Mamba moves.

It could be just a coincidence that both Giannis and Doncic have received NBA honors this year and both of them also have had some sort of connection with Kobe.

Regardless of whether Kobe has played a role on Giannis and Doncic’s achievements or not, It appears that the Mamba Mentality is real.