Playing against Kobe Bryant was an unpleasant experience for most NBA players, but it was particularly worse for those plying their trade for the Los Angeles Clippers. The Lakers legend loved beating up their crosstown rivals, much to the frustration of Clippers players like Quentin Richardson, who wanted to humble the superstar guard more than anything else.
Advertisement
During a special joint episode of the All The Smoke and the Knuckleheads podcasts, Richardson shed light on how desperate he and his teammates were for wins against Bryant and the Lakers. The retired guard, who played for the Clippers from 2000 to 2004, claimed he tried to intimidate the Lakers guard the best he could. But to no avail.
Q said during the show,
“[Playing against the Lakers] was a championship every game… For me, man, being from The Crib (suburb in Chicago), it’s like, he [Kobe] ain’t nice like that. So I’m gonna try to f**k him up… But like, when you see that s**t don’t matter…once you see like he don’t see entirely none of that s**t, like period, it’s like hold up.”
Richardson added that Bryant was not only unfazed by his intimidation but proceeded to play even better after he attempted to knock him off his game, irking him further.
During Richardson’s four-year stint with the Clippers, Bryant faced the Clips 15 times and averaged 27.9 points, 6.5 rebounds, 5.9 assists and 2.4 steals. He also helped the Lakers win two championships in that span.
The Clippers were a poorly run franchise and finished with a losing record for the first 15 seasons of Bryant’s 20-year career. However, Kobe still brought his A-game every time he suited up to play against the Lakers’ crosstown rivals and he divulged the reason for it in a 2013 interview.
Clippers’ draft snub fueled Kobe Bryant’s hate for the franchise
The Clippers owned the seventh pick in the 1996 NBA draft and were touted to be among the teams vying to land Bryant. The 17-year-old sensation impressed the team’s top brass during his pre-draft workout but the LA side passed on the opportunity to draft him for a bizarre reason.
In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Bryant revealed,
“I actually had a really good and firm workout with the Clippers. I did…I’m like, oh man, I’m excited I’m coming to LA. I said, ‘Alright, so you guys gonna draft me?’ [They said,] ‘No!’ I asked them why? They said, we wanna turn things around with our organization and we felt like if we drafted a 17-year-old kid, then the city of Los Angeles won’t take us seriously.”
On the other side of the town, the Lakers’ top brass were also thoroughly impressed by Bryant’s pre-draft workout and were smitten with the 17-year-old prodigy. They traded starting center Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for the draft rights to the young guard, which proved to be one of the best, if not the best move in the franchise’s history.
The Clippers, adamant on wanting to be taken seriously, picked 20-year-old center Lorenzen Wright, who averaged 7.7 points and was shipped to the Atlanta Hawks in 1999 after three years in LA. Their decision to pass on Bryant not only ensured they remained the league’s laughing stock but also irked the guard, who gave it his all every time he faced them, as a reminder of what they could’ve had.
