"He was the basketball version of me, and I was the rap version of him, and that’s facts!"
That's Kanye West ... explaining why he and Kobe Bryant were one and the same -- LEGENDARY -- and in typical Kanye style, he's not holding back.
It's spelled out in a candid (just released) interview with GQ that went down back in February, less than a month after his good pal Kobe died in a helicopter crash very close to Kanye's Calabasas-area home.
As part of the interview, Kanye agreed to take photos on a basketball court -- and admitted, it was therapeutic.