didn’t need to get butterflies out. He never had any to begin with. “Jermaine was 17 going on 18, and Kobe was 17 going on 30,” Tapscott recalls. “Kobe didn’t need to ease into anything, because he was already so self-possessed. And frankly, his workout was one of the best I’d ever seen. He finished, and [the scouts] looked at each other and said, ‘He ain’t falling to us.’ ”
