Weary of long discussions about knees, ankles and adductors, I got Kobe Bryant on the phone for a chat about the semantics of “jerk.”

Bryant, who just wrapped up his brilliant 20-year NBA career, has become a leadership mentor to Draymond Green. The two have formed a Brotherhood of the Jerk.

Bryant often was characterized as a jerk, someone who pushed, prodded, challenged and harassed his teammates.

“It’s your job as a leader to bring out the best in people,” Bryant said recently. “If bringing the best out of people is being a jerk, then I think that as a society we need to reconsider what our perspective of being a jerk is.”

“Jerk” is not a label Bryant embraces.

“If you talk to all my guys that we won championships together — the Shannon Browns, the Josh Powells, the Adam Morrisons — we love each other,” Bryant said. “We ride together through thick and thin. So if you ask them, they’ll look at you like you’re crazy. ‘What kind of question is that? He’s my guy.’”

Their styles are different, Bryant and Green, but both seize the leadership role by the throat. In the Warriors’ just-completed series win over Portland, Green deliberately tried to rile up the Trail Blazers in order to force his team to reach a higher level of focus and passion.

It was triple-reverse psychology from the pike position. A jerky thing to do, but it worked.

Bryant began reaching out to Green early this season, through the media and one on one. Bryant got in Green’s ear at the All-Star Game, and has phoned Green since then. What’s up with that?

“After playing all these years, I feel it’s important to share whatever knowledge I have with him, and with other young players as well,” Bryant said.

What does Bryant try to impart?

“How to listen and understand who your teammates are,” Bryant said, “and what they may be going through, and how to drive those things out of people. And also perspective of what people (outside the team) might say about you, in terms of having a bad reputation, or you’re a dirty player.

“You can’t let that stuff bother you. You have one job to do, and that’s to bring out the best. What the outside world says is really irrelevant. You can be a nice guy (to the outside world), but if you lose a championship, you’re a loser. ... That’s what I tried to explain to Draymond: Don’t worry about the outside world, that’s not important. The important ones are your teammates. How can you guys get the best out of each other.”

I asked Bryant why he zeroed in on Green.

“Draymond is a rare breed in this day and age,” Bryant said. “He’s a competitor, and he’s not afraid to show he’s a competitor. He’s not afraid to address certain issues with teammates and with (opponents) that may seem uncomfortable. He’s a challenger.”

Bryant added, “He has great intuition. He’s studied the game a lot. He’s a historian of the game, he asks a lot of questions about old stories and players, and what they would do here, what they would do there. I think he cares about a certain depth of the game, whereas the majority of young players just stay on the surface.”

Bryant encourages Green to stir it up, but why stir up the mellow groove of a team that won 73 regular-season games?

“In the playoffs,” Bryant said, “there’s so much friction that emerges, there are so many tough things you have to go through emotionally, if the team is constantly on an even-keel path, when those moments of tension arise in the playoffs, your teammates won’t be used to handling them. ... It’s like sailing on glassy water. If you do that all the time, and all the sudden the storm hits, you have no idea how to handle it.

“You have to have some guys on the team that are hitting those buttons every day in practice. You’re creating that tension, you’re creating competitive nastiness in practice. You have to have that in order to build up that internal fortitude.”

Bryant said Lakers head coach Phil Jackson encouraged trash talk and rough play in practice. Warriors head coach Steve Kerr doesn’t necessarily encourage that kind of stuff, but he played under Jackson in Chicago, won three championship rings, and understands the concept. Maybe that’s why Kerr gives Green latitude with his attitude.

Kerr says that without Green, the Warriors are soft.

Call Bryant or Green soft, be ready to fight.

Call either man a jerk, he’ll give you a shrug.

Scott Ostler is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: sostler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @scottostler

West finals

Thunder vs. Warriors

All games on TNT

Monday: at Oracle Arena, 6 p.m.

Wednesday: at Oracle Arena, 6 p.m.

Sunday: at Oklahoma City, 5 p.m.

May 24: at Oklahoma City, 6 p.m.

May 26: at Oracle Arena, 6 p.m.*

May 28: at Oklahoma City, 6 p.m.*

May 30: at Oracle Arena, 6 p.m.*