Kobe Black Mamba is a nickname, it might be his own take of the. In an interview with ESPN interview when he had given an explanation:
"mamba snake can attack at full speed to maintain the accuracy of 99%, which is what I want to have the accuracy of basketball"
reads as follows:
An actual excerpt from Ric Bucher's ESPN The Mag cover story about Kobe and Phil (and no, I'm not making this up):
Here's Kobe explaining his new nickname: "The mamba can strike with 99 percent accuracy at maximum speed, in rapid succession. That's the kind of basketball precision I want to have. Not being able to train the last two summers, I was in a gunfight with a rusty butter knife. I did my share of killing, but I was just fighting to survive. "
References:
sports.espn.go.com/e...?page=simmons/051103