Combative is an understatement to describe him and to say he’s relentless would be an insult. He’s a level above those words, this is a fact I just knew after reading a particular article on Kobe Bryant’s surging drive to be the best and his insurmountable love for the game of basketball. I know that he is always the first one in the gym and the last to leave, draining one jump shot after another and honing it to near perfection. That is the Kobe Bryant I know but there is really more to that piercing stare and cold-blooded persona than he’s 21,619 career points (and counting).

Here are some highlights and somewhat unbelievable facts about Kobe Bryant’s killer instinct from Sports Illustrated’s Chris Ballard.

It’s 1989, and Bryant is 11 years old and living in Italy, where his father, Joe, is playing professional basketball. One day Kobe bugs Brian Shaw, a Boston Celtics first-round pick playing in Rome because of a contract dispute, to go one-on-one. “Kobe was out there challenging grown men to play one-on-one, and he really thought he could win” says Shaw.

In one practice during his senior year, Bryant was engaged in a three-on-three drill in a game to 10. One of his teammates was Rob Schwartz, a 5′ 7″ junior benchwarmer. With the game tied at nine, Schwartz had an opening, drove to the basket and missed, allowing the other side to score and win. “Now, most kids go to the water fountain and move on,” says Downer. Not Bryant. He chased Schwartz into the hallway and berated him. It didn’t stop there, either. “Ever get the feeling someone is staring at you — you don’t have to look at them, but you know it?” says Schwartz. “I felt his eyes on me for the next 20 minutes. It was like, by losing that drill, I’d lost us the state championship.”

Bryant had already begun to coax teammates into staying late or coming in at odd hours so he could hone his skills. “We’d play games of one-on-one to 100,” says Schwartz. “Sometimes he’d score 80 points before I got one basket. I think the best I ever did was to lose 100-12.” Imagine the focus required to score 80 freakin’ baskets before your opponent scores one. And Bryant’s probably still pissed that Schwartz broke double digits.

At Magic Johnson’s summer charity game in 1998 he went after Orlando Magic star Penny Hardaway so hard — in a charity game — that Hardaway spent the fall telling people he couldn’t wait to play the Lakers so he could go back at Bryant. And, more famously, Kobe attempted to go one-on-one against Jordan in the ‘98 All-Star Game, waving off a screen from Karl Malone. Take your pick-and-rolling butt out of here; I’ve got Jordan iso’d!

In Bryant’s mind, however, no one is unbeatable. As a rookie with the Lakers, despite his coming straight out of high school, he approached Harris. “He said, ‘Coach, if you just give me the ball and clear out, I can beat anybody in this league,’ ” recalls Harris. When that pitch didn’t work, the 6′ 6″ Bryant returned. “Then he’d say, ‘Coach, I can post up anybody who’s guarding me. If you just get me in there and clear it out, I can post up anybody.’ ” Harris chuckles.

“The crazy thing about it is, he has the ability to put new elements in his game overnight,” says Devean George, a Laker from 1999 to 2006 and a frequent target of Kobe’s requests. “He might say, ‘Stay after and guard this move. Let me try it on you,’ and he’ll do it the next day in the game.” George pauses to let this sink in. “Most of us, we’ll try it alone, then we’ll try it in practice, then in a scrimmage, and only then will we bring it out for a game. He’d do it the next day — and it would work.”

Idan Ravin, a personal trainer who works with Chris Paul, Carmelo Anthony, Gilbert Arenas and Elton Brand and is known by some in the league as “the hoops whisperer” for his effect on players, has even broken killer instinct down into components: love of the game, ambition, obsessive-compulsive behavior, arrogance/ confidence, selfishness and nonculpability/ guiltlessness. He sees them all in Bryant.

Even now, every little challenge matters to Bryant. Here he is at the end of a practice last week. Each Laker has to take a free throw. Everybody hits his except Bryant, who rims one out. The only shooter left is Derek Fisher, who shot 88.3% from the line this season. Bryant stands to the side of the basket, fidgeting. As Fisher’s shot arcs toward the rim, Bryant suddenly takes two quick steps and leaps to goaltend the attempt. “Of course,” forward Lamar Odom says later, “he couldn’t be the only one to miss.”

That is Kobe Bryant for you. In pursuit of his first title in the post-Shaq era, his desire of reaching the top burns more than ever. The only player with an incomparable killer instinct and competitive fire, the only player who gets amusement when he’s guarded by the league’s top defenders and challenging the opposing team’s main man and perhaps the only one standing at the pinnacle as the league’s best player.

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