Kobe Bryant wants kids to keep playing sports | SportsCenter

so why is it so important that kids stay with sports well it teaches you a lot of valuable lessons you know aside from the the physical you know being fit and aside from like the mental health benefits that your different playing sports there's also an emotional component to I mean Sports is the greatest metaphor we have for life you know and teaching you things like how to deal with anxiety how to deal with communicating with each other leadership performing under pressure all those very valuable lessons ok so tell me about your involvement with project play

well something I really became passionate about because of their mission of how do you make the game more engaging how do you enable kids to play you know we live in an environment now where everything is extremely structured for children and sports used to be something that kids go out and do for fun but now it's become so regimented where parents are starting to kind of inject their own experiences or past failures if you will want to their children it just takes the fun out of it and you talk about parents and what they do

and you're right they're highly influential and what children do and what they what sports they don't play talk about your involvement as a parent we all know we see that you're very visible with your daughters and playing basketball what type of lessons do you pass on well the lessons I try to pass on or you know one is the commitment that they have to each other and trying to build a bond kind of a sisterhood and the other thing is the game is fun so how do you pique their curiosity how do you get them

interested in the sport you know how do you teach them the game versus barking out instructions you know get them to think and when they can think and problem solve on their own the game becomes something that they own there's something that becomes more enjoyable to them versus having another parent on a Cylon that's just barking out orders helicopter parents exactly say so how have you seen youth sports change over the years you know when many many moons ago when I was younger a you was really starting to come around and we started seeing sports

being played more and more and more and more and more and now it's gotten to a point where it's it's basically a business and a lot of these kids don't have the opportunity to let their bodies heal don't have the opportunity to really grow as basketball players or as athletes because of all the pressure that's being put on them and you know I think it's it's been going downhill for quite a while well we talked about what parents can do to be different how can coaches do a better job when they have these children in

they're actually under their wings if you will teach teach and listen you know and it's not about us as coaches and us winning or losing this game has nothing to do with this game at this stage it's really about helping these individual children these kids get better how do you help them to become better people and better athletes it's not about you and winning the game and if you can remove yourself in that equation and just focus on teaching that I think the kids experience will be much better that's a solid message get better it's

not about you all right Kobe Bryant thank you so much we appreciate your involvement in project play and the effort to keep kids involved in sports thanks for watching ESPN on YouTube for more sports highlights and analysis be sure to download the ESPN app and for live streaming sports and premium content subscribe to ESPN Plus