Leopard Lessons

Kenyon Martin and J.R. Smith have both been yapping to Kobe throughout the first two games of the Lakers/Nuggets series, prompting him to state, with a typical Kobe mix of wisdom and bullshit, "Better learn not to talk to me. You shake the tree, a leopard's gonna fall out." Obviously, that's a badass thing to say, but the curious thing about this quote is that the structure: "You shake a tree, and X falls out" usually means that X is something that's in great supply, e.g., "If you shake a tree in Bahia, a musician will fall out."

I've been madly Googling for the past half hour to see if Kobe's usage is some African proverb or something, but I haven't been able to find anything. I have, however, found numerous other African proverbs involving leopards that I hope he breaks out in Game 3, such as the Nkundo-Mongo zingers: "The foolish little antelope cut firewood for the leopard" or "The small spotted wild cat mistook the leopard for a relative!" To which J.R. could reply with the classic Baluba retort: "The leopard's skin is beautiful, but his heart evil."

Also, read the new Quotemonger, and the McGrady quote that helps a little (found via Mutoni).