When he was in first or second grade, …

When he was in first or second grade, Tatum told his mom, “I want to be like Kobe.” His mother, Brandy Cole-Barnes, responded: “Oh, so you want to play basketball?” “No,” Tatum said. “I want to be Kobe.” Cole-Barnes went one step further. “You shouldn’t want to be Kobe. You should want to be better than Kobe,” Cole-Barnes recalled. “Jayson looked at me like I was growing a unicorn horn on my head. He was like, ‘Better than Kobe? You clearly don’t know who Kobe is.’ He was young, but I wanted him to know you don’t want to be another person. He left the conversation still adamant, ‘No, I want to be Kobe.’”