There's plenty of things that can be said are used to motivate Kobe Bryant, but probably winning a sixth championship is the most important to the Los Angeles Lakers guard.

A sixth championship would both tie Michael Jordan's ring count and increase Bryant's own collection.

Bryant is extremely self motivated, but he's always looking for anything extra to give him an edge over his competition. As the upcoming season approaches, Bryant says he's using the low expectations made by credits about the Lakers season as being the extra motivation needed to perform and exceed expectations this season.

"It's fueling me. I can feel it already," Bryant said at the time. "People saying players at this stage of their career have an Achilless [injury] and aren't the same. I can hear it already. It's [ticking] me off right now."

It was previously reported that Bryant was ahead of schedule in coming back from the surgery and that he's "shattered" the timetable that would traditionally be associated with such an injury of that magnitude.

"We don't know" Bryant told the gathered reporters. "That's the thing about this injury is that the surgical procedure was different how we did it was different. Because of that the recovery has been different the timetable has been different the normal timetable for recovering from an Achilles we've shattered that. Three-and-a-half months I can already walk just fine I am lifting weight just fine. So we don't know what that timetable is going to be this is new territory for us all."

Bryant added:

"The surgical procedure was different [...] and because of that the recovery has been different," Bryant said in the southern city of Shenzhen. "The normal timetable for recovery from an Achilles, we've shattered that. Three-and-a-half months I can already walk just fine, I'm lifting weights with the Achilles just fine and that's different. So we don't know what that timetable is going to be. It's kind of new territory for us all."

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