“It pisses me off! My goal was to win 8 championships”: When Lakers’ Kobe Bryant explained how Spurs did not let him overtake Michael Jordan’s 6 rings

Lakers legend Kobe Bryant sincerely believed he could have won more championships than Michael Jordan if not for his teammates

Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant were two of the best athletes to ever step foot on a basketball court. They had a brilliant rapport off the court and were very close to one another. However, that never stopped them from being competitive with one another.

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Being the two fiercest competitors the league has ever seen, it was highly unlikely that they would go easy against each other, and they never did. There are many cases where one gassed the other one up by trash-talking them. An example of the same is when Kobe burst for 42 points in the first half against MJ because of something MJ said in the previous matchup. However, there is one regret Kobe Bryant had, that could not go away once he hung up his boots.

Kobe Bryant was sure he could have won more rings than Michael Jordan

Kobe Bryant had a glorious career, where he achieved a ton of success. The Black Mamba won 5x NBA Championships, 2x Finals MVP, NBA MVP, 18x All-Star, and more. However, whenever he thought about rings and Michael Jordan, Kobe always felt terrible for being a ring behind.

When Kobe Bryant made his appearance on ‘All the Smoke’ podcast, Matt Barnes asked him about the same. There Kobe said,

“Oh, it pissed me off,” he stated off. “But, things are what they are. You push for a goal, and my original goal was to try to win eight. You push for it. You push for it and push for it, and you do the best you can.”

“But at the end of the day, you can be comfortable with the results and where they landed and where they ended up. And so that’s the most important thing. That’s why I can be really really comfortable with the career that I’ve had. Because I worked as hard as you possibly could.”

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Maybe if Shaq did not leave LA, things would have been different, but Kobe doesn’t feel the same. He felt that Tim Duncan and the Spurs were too good to be beaten by the duo. However, one can just speculate, as now there is no way of confirming the same.

Although Kobe did not have as many rings as MJ, his impact to the game, and to the community is on the same scale as His Airness.