Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal were a couple of fire-breathing dragons. They clashed with each other all the time, but when they turned on the opposition, it was lights out for them. There was nothing Kobe and Shaq couldn’t do with their 1-2 sucker punch combo.
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except get along. Kobe, in his Number 8 days, had a lot of hair on his head but not enough foliage to keep him cool. A brash, hot-headed young superstar who believed only Michael Jordan was his equal, Bryant needed a change of pace, hair, and personnel to channel his inner mamba mentality.
During the 2005-06 season, Kobe saw the best of himself, on a personal level. He was the best scorer in the league by far and was genuinely unstoppable. He had a stretch in February of that season where scoring below 40 was a bad night for him.
But one thing he could not do was win a title without Shaq. But Shaq was doing just that with a shiny new shooting guard called Dwyane Wade. Big Diesel proved to the world he could win a championship without Fro-be Bryant, and No. 8 had no response to that.
When a fan heckled and pointed it out to the Black Mamba, all he could do was sit tight. He had been apprehended and was unable to respond. But what he could do was work on himself for four straight seasons to become a master of his domain.
Shaquille O’Neal had done his part to fuel the narrative – how would Kobe react?
The duo had all the fans behind them when they wore the same jersey, but were divided when the rift became unwatchable. It came to a point where the duo almost came to blows and always threw potshots at each other, even on media day.
Press conferences, interviews, postgame pressers, books You name it, and the duo were the talk of the town. Not for the right reasons, of course, but talk nonetheless. With Dwyane Wade effectively pushing Shaq into the upper echelon of active players, fans like the one in Sacramento were the extra fuel he needed to get better.
Kobe Bryant made some changes – he got more jewelry than Superman ever did
The first thing to go was the fro. He became the clean-shaven Black Mamba who wore number 24, not 8. The hard-headed Kobe Bean was no more. In his place was the silent killer, who was out for blood. Just like the snake, Bryant was waiting in the shadows for a chance to strike.
The chance came in 2008, against his eternal rivals, the Boston Celtics. But then it all went south because he lost that series. It broke him, and a gold medal of redemption brought him back from the dead. He won three major trophies between 2008 and 2010.
Olympic gold and back-to-back NBA championships Kobe was now more decorated than his enemy, Shaquille O’Neal. He had the ammunition now to go back to the Sacramento stadium. “Hey, I see you!” “What now?” was all he had to say for the fan to take his words back.
4 years—he took four years to answer a heckler. But Kobe Bryant did, and with style.
