Kobe Bryant tells Pau Gasol to be the Black Swan

Pau Gasol is a lot of things. Skilled. Spanish. Intellectual. A good guy.

But he often defers. When Kobe Bryant steps up his aggressive play, Gasol will fade back.

That’s not what Kobe wants — he wants a true partner — so he explained it to Gasol is an intellectual (or at least pseudo-intellectual) way, using the soon to be Best Picture, according to Kevin Ding at the Orange County Register.

“Even when he was in Memphis and he was the go-to guy, he was always very nice,” Bryant said of Gasol. “Very white swan. I need him to be black swan. Be an (expletive) sometimes.”

If you haven’t seen Black Swan… no way I’m going to explain it to you here. Complex movie designed to screw with your mind, plus I’d have to explain how in Swan Lake one ballerina is expected to play the innocent white swan and more devilish black swan. I guess I just did. Suffice to say that in the movie one ballerina played by Natalie Portman thrives as the soloist white swan but does not fit the other personality of being “an (expletive).”

You get the idea. Apparently so did Gasol as he played well against Houston for the most part.