Dirk Nowitzki Was Ready to Sacrifice His Spot on Mavericks For Kobe Bryant

Many beloved players who have worn the purple and gold of the Los Angeles Lakers, but there’s probably none have been adored more than Kobe Bryant. Magic Johnson is the only one even with an argument, since like Kobe, he also spent his entire career with the Lakers.

But here’s an alternate reality where Kobe played elsewhere, and it may have been much closer to coming true than anybody realizes.

Mark Cuban appeared yesterday on the Run Your Race podcast, and he told host Theo Pinson about the time his Mavs came this close to trading for the Black Mamba.

“I was on Dancing with the Stars [in 2007], and there was this production assistant named Elvis, who was like the ultimate Kobe Lakers fans,” Cuban said. “And so I’d be in there practicing my whatever, and he’d be like, ‘Kobe, Kobe,'” as he mimed a jump shot.

The inner workings of an NBA front office are usually a closely guarded secret, but Cuban gave Elvis some insider information. “I’m like, ‘Elvis, I think we might trade for Kobe,’ because he’s really pissed off at the Lakers at that point. I’m talking to Rob Pelinka, who was his agent at the time, and I’m talking to [then Lakers owner] Jerry Buss.”

“They were like, ‘OK, if you can convince Jerry, Kobe wants to do this,'” Cuban recalled. “And so we had a trade set up where it would be Josh Howard, Jet [Jason Terry] and I think two No. 1s for Kobe.”

The deal was moving closer and closer to actually happening, until Pinson’s fellow UNC alum Mitch Kupchak, then the GM of the Lakers, stepped in. “He talked Kobe out of it,” Cuban lamented.

Earlier in his career, Kobe had dominated the league with Shaquille O’Neal. Later, he would get back to the mountaintop with Pau Gasol. But imagining him paired up with Dirk Nowitzki is a tantalizing thought.

Even Dirk knew what a coup it would be for the Mavs to land Kobe, and he jokingly volunteered to help in any way he could. “Dirk was telling me, ‘S***, you could trade me, I would trade me for Kobe,’ and I’m like, ‘No, Dirk, that defeats the purpose,'” Cuban laughed. “It was that close.”

Seeing those two Hall of Famers play together would have been incredible, but at the same time, it worked out in the end for both. Kobe ended up a Laker for life with two statues outside the Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena), while Dirk went down as the greatest player in Mavs history with a statue of his own outside the American Airlines Center.