Kobe Bryant’s career in 2003-04 reached its lowest point. Then 24, the Lakers guard found himself in the middle of a career-ending controversy. A 19-year-old hotel staffer had accused Bryant of s**ual assault. Kobe refused all allegations, though he did acknowledge being involved with the woman. However, Kobe maintained the meeting was consensual. Phil Jackson in his book wrote about how this controversy forever changed his perception of Kobe.
Advertisement
Even before the things, things weren’t alright for the Lakers legend. Once considered a fearsome rising talent, he was quickly becoming the sore thorn in Shaquille O’Neal’s dreams of making the Lakers his own.
Bryant was hungry to make the gold and purple his. But with Shaquille O’Neal still on the squad, that was impossible. The two giants of basketball clashed on and off the court.
Their feud corroded the Hollywood team from the inside and every player was against Kobe. Even Phil Jackson was quickly but surely turning against the man who’d come to be known as the Black Mamba.
Phil Jackson lashed out at Kobe Bryant
After the case was made public, Kobe’s career and life were catapulted into infamy. He was a hated man. His teammates and head coach disliked his style. But the accusations turned into the final nail for Jackson.
In his book “Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success,” Phil claimed that the accusations against Bryant opened past wounds. Jackson’s daughter was also a victim of s**ual assault and it is only natural that the trauma of it seeped in when the whole Kobe incident happened.
In the book Jackson disclosed how it completely changed his perspective of Bryant:
“The Kobe incident triggered all my unprocessed anger and tainted my perception of him. … It distorted my view of Kobe throughout the 2003-04 season. No matter what I did to extinguish it, the anger kept smoldering in the background.”
Jackson was partly responsible for the collapse of the Shaq-Kobe dynasty
Phil Jackson deserves credit for the Lakers’ three-peat with Shaq and Kobe at its center. The head coach used all his experience from Chicago Bulls to guide the gold and purple to a similar feat.
That being said, Jackson similarly also deserves credit for the collapse of the Lakers’ golden dynasty. By siding with Shaq, he alienated Bryant. This caused the rift to widen between the stars. In fact, Robert Horry once even accused Phil of starting the whole thing thus bringing an end to the glorious era.
