Kobe Bryant and Samaki Walker were both drafted in 1996. They eventually teamed up and won the 2002 NBA title with the Lakers. That’s not what they’re collectively known for though; at least not after they brawled on the team bus after Kobe sucker-punched Walker over not paying up on a losing bet.
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Walker was the featured guest on Byron Scott’s Fast Break last week, and the conversation was so good that it demanded two parts, the second of which dropped this morning.
Walker spent just two years with the Lakers, but it was a notable time for the franchise. His first season after coming over from the Spurs was 2001-02, which was also the final year of the Shaq-Kobe three-peat. The following season, his last in L.A., was also the beginning of the end of the dynasty, and tensions were high.
As Walker described it, Kobe had won a half-court shooting contest in practice the day before for $100 man. The rule was that you had 48 hours to pay up, but on the team bus the next day, Kobe asked Walker for his money.
“He said, ‘Yo, you got my money,'” Walker said. “I said, ‘Man, I ain’t got my wallet or anything with me. I’m in my practice gear and everything.’ I said, ‘I got you when we get back,’ and I put my headphones back on.”
“I put my headphone back on,” he continued, “and BOW, he took off on me. ‘Damn, I’m like what the f*** just happened?’ Because you know I totally wasn’t expecting that, I told the man I’mma pay him his money.”
Needless to say, bedlam ensued, or as Walker put it, “I went from 0-60. All I’m thinking is, ‘I’m gonna kill this motherf*****, I don’t give a f*** who he is or what happened, I’m gonna kill him.”
Walker tried to get through his teammates to get to Kobe, and when he couldn’t get past them, he even threw his phone at the All-Star shooting guard. He also told head coach Phil Jackson to get the bus stopped so that they could handle this.
The way Walker tells it, Kobe is the one that instigated it, but he’s the one who suffered for it. “They ushered me off the bus, they locked me up in the back room, wouldn’t let me come to practice and shootaround and everything,” he said.
No matter, he figured, he knew Kobe had to come back to the bus sooner or later, so he planned to wait for him there and kill him then.
Kobe must have known the trouble he was in, because he never came back to the bus. He took a taxi home instead, which was probably the best move for all parties involved. Walker still wanted retribution, though, but before he could go find Kobe, he realized that he had a voicemail.
“It’s a message from him,” Walker said. “The motherf*****’s crying, swear to God, crying on my phone. ‘Man, I don’t know what happened, what was wrong, I don’t know why I did what I did with my friends.’ But now he’s calling me a friend!”
Kobe’s emotional message clued Walker in to the fact that the he was dealing with some deeper issues at the time, but that did nothing to quench the bloodlust he felt after being punched for no good reason.
He got to the arena early so that he could confront Kobe, but the situation was finally defused by Shaq’s Uncle Jerome, who got the two of them together and had them talk it out.
In the years that followed, Walker and Kobe were cool, and the 4 time NBA champion even donated a pair of the shoes he wore at the All-Star Game to help Walker’s foundation. “Everything was respect and all love, man,” he said. Asked if he ever did pay Kobe his $100 though, Walker laughed and yelled, “Hell no! After that, that was hell no. I held on to it after that. You ain’t getting it now.”
