Michael Dyer draws inspiration from Kobe Bryant

Michael Dyer draws inspiration from Kobe Bryant - Oregon and Auburn plays have been in town so long that they’re running out of things to do and movies to watch, but earlier in the week they got a break from football when both teams attended the Suns-Lakers game in Phoenix on Wednesday.

Cam Newton was interviewed on-air at halftime but probably no person was more excited to be in the arena that night than freshman running back Michael Dyer, who has been a Kobe Bryant fan since childhood.


“It was my first time seeing Kobe in person and I’ve been a fan my whole life,” said Dyer, who is from Little Rock, Ark., just like Lakers guard Derek Fisher. “He goes out there and plays his heart out, and you want to do the same thing when you go out and play. I’ve looked up to Kobe since I was a little kid, my mom has been a Kobe fan her whole life.”

Just days away from the biggest game of his life, Dyer said it is inspiring to watch someone like Bryant, who is renowned for his work ethic.

“When you see someone like him on the little videos or clips with highlights and all those game situations, you wanna be able to do the same thing,” Dyer said.

The freshman, who stands at 5-foot-9, has rushed for 950 yards this season – a 73 yards per game average – and played basketball up until his junior year of high school.

“I played in the post a little bit, got down there with the men,” Dyer joked. “But it’s not too much fun because there was always too much contact. Every time I touched someone they called a foul.”

Dyer said he still plays pick-up, but that no one should be fooled by Nick Fairley’s claims on Twitter that he is the best basketball player on the Tigers football team.

“Nick has no skills,” Dyer said, cringing. “The secret is, he cannot play.”

Fairley disagreed, saying that when Dyer first got to campus last fall and they played against each other, “I lit Mike up.”

But Dyer isn’t buying it.

“He definitely just wants to have a story going back and forth,” he said, “but we all know that Nick Fairley cannot play basketball.”


--Lindsay Schnell (also on Twitter)
Source : http://blog.oregonlive.com/behindducksbeat/2011/01/bcs_national_championship_mich.html
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