Cassius Stanley on Kobe Bryant's College Advice

Lakers legend helped Los Angeles native decide on Duke

Los Angeles native Cassius Stanley chose to travel across the country to go to school at Duke after meeting with late Lakers’ legend Kobe Bryant.

“I met Kobe a couple times,” Stanley said. “One of the times we talked, I just ran down all my college choices. He didn’t necessarily say the name Duke, but he basically said to go somewhere where the person’s going to teach you the game the best, and you’re going to learn the game. Because at the next level, everyone‘s going to be able to run, jump and do everything I do, but the thing that’s going to separate myself and whoever is going to be who’s going to learn the game and who are they learning the game from. I think that was pretty much the easy choice. You can break down anybody in college basketball—I don’t think there’s a better basketball mind than Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski). That was definitely one of the things I thought about in my decision.”

Another factor in his college decision was his high school friend and eventual Duke teammate, Joey Baker.

“He had a pretty big influence,” Stanley said of Baker, who was playing sparingly as a freshman while Stanley was deciding where to go to school. “He was calling me pretty much every other day, just checking in, seeing how I was doing. Obviously, I knew what check-in meant. He was clearly asking where my head was at, but I definitely appreciate Joey. He was another person who really made the transition easy. We had such a great relationship, even before Duke. It was easy to come somewhere that I knew I had a really great friend in Joey.”