The Lakers’ three-peat at the turn of the century was filled to the brim with turmoil behind the scenes. Down the stretch, superstar duo Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal stopped seeing eye-to-eye, eventually leading to the latter’s exit in 2004. Details about the guard’s strenuous relationship with the center were well-documented. However, seemingly nobody knew that Bryant wasn’t too pleased with Phil Jackson’s antics either.
Advertisement
In an interview with GQ in 2015, he was asked about his relationship with the 11-time championship-winning head coach. He unsurprisingly spoke highly of his former mentor but claimed that he found some of the ‘Zen Master’s habits less than tasteful. He was particularly miffed about how Jackson spoke about Bryant to the media.
The guard claimed he understood why the head coach talked down on him. However, he wished his former head coach could have spoken about it directly instead of manipulating him and O’Neal through the media, which he found insulting. Bryant said,
“Part of that was him trying to tame me. He’s also very intelligent, and he understood the dynamic he had to deal with between me and Shaq. So he would take shots at me in the press, and I understood he was doing that in order to ingratiate himself to Shaq. And since I knew what he was doing, I felt like that was an insult to my intelligence. I mean, I knew what he was doing. Why not just come to me and tell me that?”
The Lakers icon also revealed that Jackson would disclose things to the media that the guard told his head coach in confidence. Eventually, this got to him, and he no longer wished to interact with his head coach off the court. He said,
Another thing was that I would go to him in confidence and talk about certain things, and he would then use those things to manipulate the media against me. And from that standpoint, I finally said, “No way. I’m not gonna deal with that anymore”… I was finally like, “Fuck it. I’m done with this guy. I’ll play for him and win championships, but I will have no interaction with him.”
Despite their differences, Bryant and Jackson continued working together earnestly. They won two more championships without O’Neal, cementing their legacies as one of, if not the best in their respective roles. It’s intriguing to wonder whether the tension between the head coach and his stars played a role in helping the team win championships or if it cost them another ring or two.
