let's suppose that a major financial crisis hits america ( hint : this is close)
will his skills be still valuable ? no
nobody cares about playing basket ball anymore in this case. people care about saving their as* , not watching entertainements.
real valuable skills are skills that will be needed anytime ,anywhere
like manual labor. medical knowledge and so on.
Put yourself against Kobe in almost any competition and he will eat your lunch (all things being equal). He wasn't born an MVP, he's known as one of the hardest working athletes around. Kobe would practice from 5am to 7am...in High School! What were you doing at 5am in high school? Other professional ball players would say he was 2-3 hrs into practice while they were all waking up, he'd practice in the dark, he'd practice more injured than they would healthy, he'd practice without a ball, he'd play left handed when his right shoulder was injured. And as if ball isn't enough for him, he decided to learn about investing from a Billionaire investor:
"For the next few months my phone never stops buzzing in the middle of the night. It's Kobe, reading this article, checking out this tweet, following this guy, diving into this Ted Talk, diving into the Y Combinator Demo Day stuff. And I'm getting these texts, literally two or three in the morning, and my wife is like, 'Are you having an affair with Kobe Bryant? What is happening here?'"
Talent opened up the door, his work ethic made him a giant in his profession.
The guy retires a multi millionaire many times over, and decides to make a movie. 99% of people dream of retiring when they get rich, this guy has an insatiable hunger and is absolutely obsessed.