Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant had a very close relationship all the way until his untimely death on January 26th. Bryant was like a little brother to Mike and very clearly patterned his entire game after Jordan.
While the two played during different eras of the game, there was a short time their careers overlapped and very nearly became teammates.
Bryant actually wanted to team up with Mike on the Wizards during his last stint in the league and it had a lot to do with his feud with Shaq.
(via Michael Lee of The Washington Post)
“When Kobe Bryant made his first public comments after signing a two-year extension in November 2013, the Los Angeles Lakers were in Washington and the future Hall of Famer held a news conference at Verizon Center while a Washington Wizards banner hung behind him and a microphone with the Wizards’ “dc” logo rested in front of him. The image gave Wizards fans a chance to indulge a fantasy in which Bryant collected championship rings a few blocks from the White House instead of Los Angeles.
Very few know that this seemingly laughable fantasy was nearly reality: More than a decade ago, Bryant wanted to get away from Los Angeles, and the team he wanted to join was the Wizards, where he would join forces with his mentor Michael Jordan.
Those plans evaporated when then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin parted ways with Jordan in 2003, a year before Bryant became a free agent, but as Wizards fans pine over the idea of Kevin Durant coming to Washington as a free agent, the near-miss that was Kobe-to-DC finally can be shared.
“That’s true,” Bryant confirmed recently. “A long time ago? Yeah.”
“I’ve always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I’ve been really, really big on that. Being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried to pick their brains and always tried to absorb knowledge. Obviously, being in that situation [with the Wizards], it would’ve helped having to be around [Michael Jordan] every day and so on.”
During the height of his feud with then-teammate Shaquille O’Neal in the early 2000s, Bryant wanted to be under Jordan in a different capacity . Bryant revealed recently he felt pushed to ponder a future away from the purple and gold banners after O’Neal – a three-time Finals most valuable player from 2000-02 – went too far.
“The challenge had been thrown down upon me, of not being able to win without Shaq. A public challenge never really bothered me too much, but he made a couple of comments as well. I think he called me Penny Hardaway Part 2 or something like that. So that’s what [ticked] me off,” Bryant said. “Then it was like, ‘Listen, you know the step back that I took to help us win championships. Let’s not get [expletive] confused. I can dominate on my own. I decided to stay here and win championships and sacrifice MVPs and scoring titles and all that stuff.’ So once that was said, it was like a line in the sand now.”
It never happened for Bryant, but it worked out for him in the long run as he was able to win multiple titles with the Lakers without Shaq.
Those two had since ended their feud and became good friends before Bryant’s demise, but Kobe never missed an opportunity to remind Shaq who had more rings.
