Sue Bird remembers drinking wine with Kobe Bryant at the 2008 Olympics

Kobe Bryant’s lengthy basketball resume includes two Olympic gold medals, so it makes sense that U.S. athletes meeting with reporters in a series of news conferences before the upcoming Tokyo Games evoked the former Lakers star’s name.

The best story of the week involved the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing, where Bryant joined in a game of spades with several players from the women’s national team.

“There was a little wine involved and he got very competitive in drinking the wine,” recalled Sue Bird, a four-time gold medalist. “And it was like he didn’t want to be behind anybody on these glasses.

“And we were, like, ‘Kobe, we’ve got practice tomorrow. We’re just sipping,’” she said. “No. He was into this wine. ‘I’ve had three glasses. You’ve only had one.’”

The Olympics took place two months after the Lakers lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals. At some point during the card game, Bryant picked up a newspaper and saw a photo of Celtics star Paul Pierce.

“And he literally ripped out this picture of Paul Pierce and he folded it up and he put it in his pocket,” Bird said. “He was like, ‘This is motivation for next year.’ It was just this glimpse into how he worked, how he functioned.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.