Kobe Bryant Has No Time to Build Close Friendships

Kobe Bryant is handsome in a suit while dribbling a basketball on the cover of GQ magazine’s March 2015 issue, out on newsstands now!

Here’s what the 36-year-old basketball star had to share:

On his ego: “Does my nature make me less enjoyable to play with? Of course. Of course it does. Is it possible that some top players in the league are intimidated by that? Yes. But do I want to play with those players? Does the Laker organization want those specific players? No. Magic. Jordan. Bird. We all would have been phenomenal teammates. This organization wants players who will carry this franchise to another five or six championships. The player who does that has to be cut from the same cloth. And if they’re not cut from that cloth, they don’t belong here.”

On relying on religion during his sexual assault case in 2003: “I started to consider the mortality of what I was doing. The one thing that really helped me during that process�”I’m Catholic, I grew up Catholic, my kids are Catholic�”was talking to a priest. It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, ‘Did you do it?’ And I say, ‘Of course not.’ Then he asks, ‘Do you have a good lawyer?’ And I’m like, ‘Uh, yeah, he’s phenomenal.’ So then he just said, ‘Let it go. Move on. God’s not going to give you anything you can’t handle, and it’s in his hands now. This is something you can’t control. So let it go.’ And that was the turning point.”

On having friends: “I have ‘like minds,’. You know, I’ve been fortunate to play in Los Angeles, where there are a lot of people like me. Actors. Musicians. Businessmen. Obsessives. People who feel like God put them on earth to do whatever it is that they do. Now, do we have time to build great relationships? Do we have time to build great friendships? No. Do we have time to socialize and to hangout aimlessly? No. Do we want to do that? No. We want to work.”

For more on Kobe, visit GQ.com!

Bigger pic inside…