Asked how he got on Kobe Bryant’s good side, former Los Angeles Lakers guard Sasha Vujacic said he put in the hard work and focused solely on winning the title with the team, via Lakers Nation:

“I didn’t figure out the way. I didn’t care about that. When I showed up at the gym at 4 o’clock, 5 o’clock in the morning and there’s Kobe, so when you see there’s the franchise player and a young kid that came from Europe that I have to prove myself and he recognized why I was in L.A.,” Vujacic said.

“I didn’t care about Hollywood, I didn’t care about celebrity statuses and stuff like that. All I cared about was winning and when you put the hard work in, when you combine talent and opportunity, the real ones recognize real and that was with Kobe.”