Kobe plugs views of kiwi sport psychologist

World basketball great Kobe Bryant has promoted the views of Massey sport psychologist Professor Gary Hermansson and posted a link to the Massey News website on Facebook for his 13 million followers to read earlier today.

The post has already received 3300 "likes" and, within five hours, generated 5692 unique page views of a story and video link that went online 22 days ago.

Mr Bryant, from the United States Olympic team and five-time National Basketball Association champion player from the Los Angeles Lakers, has a fortune estimated at $US200 million and is arguably the greatest and most famous star of basketball.

Professor Hermansson, who is in London with the New Zealand Olympic team, was interviewed at Massey before he left and his views and a video of the interview posted on the University's website earlier this month. He outlines the key factors high-performance athletes need to focus on to achieve at the top level.

"I thought it might be good to share a little piece I found online about training the mind so the body can perform at its highest potential, even in the most pressure packed environment," Mr Bryant says.

Massey web content manager Glen Young says the hit rate was huge. "Massey's entire website gets more than 40,000 unique visitors a week and hits on this one story in just a few hours after the Bryant facebook posting accounted for 15 cent of the 81,784 unique page views we've had today. Not only that, the analytics show people stayed there, read it and watched the video, with the average time on the page at close to six minutes."

The Bryant post is here: https://www.facebook.com/Kobe

Professor Hermansson is blogging about his experiences in London here: http://masseyblogs.ac.nz/ghermans/