Shaquille O’Neal had a secret signal with his Lakers teammates to keep the ball away from Kobe Bryant.
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Kobe Bryant was one of the greatest players we’ve ever seen in the game of basketball. The Black Mamba could do anything and everything on the court. He was an excellent offensive player, and was just as brutal on defense.
The Mamba would monopolize the offense by making too many shots, which would be the only criticism of Kobe Bryant’s great career. One of Shaquille O’Neal’s former teammates, Raja Bell, claimed that Diesel even created a secret signal that he’d tell his teammates when he wanted to shut Kobe out.
It had been rumoured that this was a point of friction throughout Shaquille O’Neal’s stint in Los Angeles.
O’Neal reportedly had a secret signal he would flash to teammates (twisting his thumb downward) asking them to stop sending the ball to Bryant, according to former player Raja Bell, who played alongside O’Neal in Phoenix.
“When Kobe was younger, he would be going in and just trying to get them, so the rest of us had a type of universal code whereby if we looked at each other and went, “[gives signal], then that meant Kobe didn’t get the ball anymore.”
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Shaquille O’Neal skirted around the question regarding his signal for Kobe Bryant
During an appearance on FS1’s Fair Game with Kristine Leahy, Shaq was asked about his secret signal for Kobe Bryant. Shaq laughed about the same, and skirted around the question. He even denied knowing who Raja Bell was, in order to n0t answer the same.
Kobe Bryant reportedly asserted that if Shaquille O’Neal had a greater work ethic, he could have won 12 NBA championships. Bryant was unaware of the effort put forward by the Hall of Fame center to keep the ball out of his hands.
In response to Bryant bringing up his old issue about the big man being out of shape — although the duo famously feuded and won three championships together with the Lakers at the start of the century — O’Neal argued the shoot-happy guard would have had 12 if he’d passed more. It appears that O’Neal came up with a plan to attempt and stop the ball-hogging.
O’Neal would become the first player to win a championship without his old running buddy after eight seasons (1996-2004) of cooperation (Miami, 2006). Bryant later won consecutive Finals MVP awards while leading the Lakers to championships in 2009 and 2010.
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