Team USA’s Kobe Bryant forgot Pau Gasol was his Lakers teammate during 2008 Olympics and ran through him in true sign of ‘Mamba Mentality’

Kobe Bryant was known around the world as ‘The Black Mamba’.

It was moniker inspired after the late, great Los Angeles Lakers legend watched Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ and needed something to separate himself from his on-court persona.

Kobe and Shaq won three straight NBA titles togetherCredit: AFPIn the film, the black mamba snake, known for its agility and aggressiveness, was used as a code name for a deadly assassin.

It was nickname befitting of one of the most competitive players to ever suit up in the NBA.

In 2008, Bryant and the rest of Team USA were looking for revenge.

Four years prior, they’d been embarrassed at the Olympic Games in Athens, finishing with a bronze medal.

READ MORE NBA16 years earlier, the original ‘Dream Team’, led by Hall of Famers Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, destroyed everyone en route to Olympic gold and set the standard for all subsequent teams to aspire to.

While the ’04 team was no Dream Team, it was still a star-studded squad bursting with NBA talent, and a third place finish on the world stage was simply unforgivable.

Team USA needed to salvage its global standing. It had to re-claim gold in 2008.

Their solution?

Bring in reigning MVP Kobe Bryant, who had never played in the Olympics before but was seething after an NBA Finals defeat to bitter rivals Boston and was desperate to see the US reestablish themselves atop the international basketball food chain.

Braynt was the de facto leader of Team USA in ’08Credit: Getty’The Redeem Team’ had found its leader, one that could take a talented but inexperienced group including Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and LeBron James, and turn them into ruthless winners.

Team USA headed to Beijing, China, in the summer of ’08 as the overwhelming favourites, but reigning world champions Spain were still the team to beat.

Old footage reveals Michael Jordan calling Kobe Bryant a ‘little Laker boy’ in their first NBA All-Star game together

After blowout wins against China, Angola and Greece, Team USA faced Spain in a preliminary round game.

Both teams were undefeated thus far (3-0), but one narrative in particular dominated the build up to the contest.

Kobe vs Pau.

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Earlier that year, 7-footer Gasol had been traded to Los Angeles to play alongside Bryant and fill the Lakers’ Shaq-sized hole that had been gaping for years.

The big-man-little-man combo immediately hit it off, forming an potent partnership that saw them finish the season 27–9 and reach the NBA Finals.

Ahead of the game vs Spain, Bryant told reporters that he and Gasol ‘are like brothers’ and that going against each other wouldn’t be easy.

Kobe and Pau were Lakers teammates who had recently reached the NBA Finals togetherCredit: Getty

They met as opponents when Team USA faced SpainCredit: Getty”I’m very happy for him that he’s playing well,” Bryant said. “I mean, we’re very, very tight, so it’s a little tough to compete against him.”

His locker room message was one of an entirely different tone.

“Kobe said he was gonna set the tone to start the game and he said, ‘I’m running through Pau’s chest’,” LeBron revealed in Netflix’s Redeem Team documentary.

James said the US players responded: “Man, you tripping. That’s your teammate. You tripping. You ain’t about to do this.”

“First play of the game I’m running through Pau Gasol.’ And we was like, ‘What?'” Dwyane Wade added.

“He said, ‘First play of the game, I know what they’re gonna run.’ And he knew Pau was gonna be the last screen and he said ‘I’m running through him’.”

Sure enough, Spain ran the play Bryant was expecting in the first few minutes of the contest.

Gasol attempted to set a screen on Bryant, who ran straight through him at full force and knocked him over to the ground.

Bryant was called for the foul and stood over his Lakers teammate as a bewildered Gasol looked around as if to check what had just happened.

Kobe had sent a message, not just to Pau and Spain, but to his own teammates, without uttering a single word.

Braynt ran straight through Gasol’s chest at full speedCredit: X@Olympics

It set the tone for the rest of the team and sent a message to everyone elseCredit: X@ Olympics”He was like, ‘No, he ain’t my teammate right now. F**k him. Get up,'” Carmelo Anthony said. “I’m like, I love this energy. This is what we need right now.”

“He just went right into the middle of my chest, tried to get right through me to send a message,” Gasol explained in the documentary.

“Not just to me, but to his teammates to say, ‘Hey, this might be my brother. I play with him. We’re close. But I don’t care about anything else but winning.'”

“We was like, ‘Oh, ain’t no way we’re losing this game,” LeBron added. “We about to beat the sh*t out of Spain.”

Team USA went on to cruise to a 37-point victory with Bryant finishing with 11 points in only 16 minutes of action.

The United States and Spain met again in the gold medal game in what turned out to be a much closer affair.

Kobe hit big shots down the stretch and finished with 20 points as the Redeem Team clinched a 118-107 victory.

Bryant had set out what he achieved to do, winning gold for Team USA and avenging the humiliation of 2004.

Bryant won two Oympic gold medals and was unbeaten for Team USACredit: AFPThe way he’d done it, embodying his ‘Mamba Mentality’ — ‘attacking what’s in front of you with passion and purpose, without fear and doubt’ — was what made it so special.

Inadvertently, he’d also helped Gasol and the Lakers.

“I sincerely believed Pau benefited from the collision more than anyone else,” Michael Lee of The Washington Post told Netflix.

“He got to see how intensely Kobe approached the game and it helped him develop the mentality he was going to need to go back to back.

“The Lakers were going to be good, but they wouldn’t be great by being happy-go-lucky.”

The team from Tinseltown won consecutive titles with Bryant and Gasol leading the way, beating the Magic in 2009 and the Celtics in 2010.

Bryant rejoined the national team for the 2012 Summer Olympics and won another gold meal, his second overall.

He finished his national team career with a record of 26–0 across three tournaments (including the USA FIBA Americas Championship), winning a gold medal each time.

His international peak undoubtedly came in 2008 though, when the entire world saw what ‘Mamba Mentality’ was all about.

Read More on talkSPORTFor Gasol, that was as good as – if not better – than anything the original Dream Team ever did.

“Kobe came and they brought their A-Team,” he said. “I think that was probably as good or better than the potentially original dream team, if you ask me”.