Kobe Bryant has a Mamba handshake, is so famous that seeing him makes men cry (Video)

As he continues to work on shattering the time table for recovering from a torn Achilles tendon, Kobe Bryant's taking a trip through China — which he does just about every offseason — to meet fans, appear at exhibitions and clinics, and hawk products for endorsers like Nike, Lenovo and Sprite. Tons of people turn out to greet the Los Angeles Lakers superstar wherever he appears, but he's an especially big deal in China, with "hundreds of thousands" of fans reportedly swarming a recent Bryant appearance in Shenzhen.

Every once in a while at these meet-and-greets, lucky fans get up close and personal with Kobe ... and if they evince a certain level of coolness, Bean will welcome them into his clandestine snake-y inner circle. If they're really down with the System, he might even show them the secret handshake:

I know what you're thinking: "Dan, 'handsnake' was just sitting there, waiting for you to use it." You're right; that was a missed opportunity on my part. I'll probably never get a handsnake with joke performance this spotty.

Oh, that isn't what you were thinking? You were thinking, "Well, that's totally ridiculous, with the slithering and the fangs?" OK, then. To that, I can only say, "Y'all must have forgot that Kobe literally makes snake sounds to call for the ball during NBA games." If you remembered that, you wouldn't find anything about this at all surprising. (Also, you're right: It is totally ridiculous.)

If the newest member of the Serpent Society (I'm just guessing) responded by giving Kobe a big ol' hug, I can only imagine how forcefully this gentleman would have reacted — I mean, the mere sight of the Mamba was apparently enough to send him into hysterics:

I'm not exactly fluent in any of the various spoken languages of China, but given the overlap in translations from The NanFang (“After seeing Kobe I was overcome with excitement. I couldn’t stop crying. I kept crying.”) and Redditor bBoy1029 ("When I saw him I was so excited! I kept on crying, my tears just won't stop running! I kept on crying when I saw you!"), it seems safe to say that this man's either really, really into Kobe Bryant or really, really in the middle of some serious emotional transference. Either way, you can kind of see why they've got a statue of Kobe up in Guangzhou, huh?

Once Bryant gets back to the States, one would assume he'll continue his full-speed ahead work to try to get back on the court in record time, which could be as early as Lakers training camp; if all goes well, the soon-to-be-35-year-old guard could be in line to take the court for an Opening Night showdown with in-house rivals the Los Angeles Clippers. If that incredibly optimistic timetable winds up bearing out, I'd bet there'll be at least a few Lakers fans bursting into tears of joy themselves. Here's hoping they can keep it together enough to convince Kobe to break 'em off a quick handsnake before they begin bawling though.

Hat-tips to Next Impulse Sports on the handshake and Reddit on the waterworks.

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