LeBron James’ move to LA Lakers has to be one of the most high profile moves in NBA history, as LeBron, who is very much in his prime has moved to one of the most celebrated franchises in NBA folklore.
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The decision to move from Cleveland to LA would have been a difficult one for LeBron, as he had multiple options on his plate. However, the lure of Los Angeles was a little too much for him to ignore and thus he decided to ply his trade there.
Now, Kobe Bryant did have a role to play in LeBron’s move to LA, asking the team owner Jeanie Buss to clean up the mess at Lakers before even thinking of luring LeBron in.
Kobe had made it very clear that LeBron would come only if things were in order and the only way to do that at the Lakers was to start afresh.
Buss thus fired fired Jim and GM Mitch Kupchak in a bid to have everything in place for James’ arrival.
“Jeanie, I know who we’re trying to get; we know who we’re trying to get, so that player is not going to come here with all of this shit going on. It’s not going to happen,” Bryant told Buss.
“So if you do want to have that focus, and go after that player, then I’m telling you that you’ve gotta clean house, and you’ve gotta just reshuffle the deck and start anew. You have the new practice facility (the UCLA Health Training Center) that we’re just moving into (in the summer of 2017). We’ve got new management, and off we go. But that player is not coming here unless you do that.
Kobe also brought in a Game of Thrones reference in order to help Buss understand and act on the situation.
“At some point, the mother of dragons just has to accept the fact that she has three big-ass dragons
“Jeanie has always been reluctant to take the reins. I think she was very concerned or conscious about respecting her father’s wishes, of how responsibility of the team management would divvy up, and I could tell it had always been something that was kind of hamstringing her a little bit.” Kobe said.
