“We Don’t Need Kobe Bryant Anyway, F**k Him”: Lakers Players Were Once Furious About Their MVP’s Transfer Request

Kobe Bryant played his entire 20-year NBA career in LA representing the famous Purple and Gold, but he was a bit uncertain a couple of times

Bryant was one of few superstars in the league who played their entire career with one franchise. When a basketball thinks of LA, they imagine basketball in the hands of The Black Mamba or Magic Johnson.

It wasn’t just the 18x All-Star who benefitted from playing for one of the biggest markets in the States. In fact, Kobe helped make the Lakers one of the best franchises in the league after a decade-long drought.

But the partnership that helped both the parties get the best out of each other could have been broken mid-way through Bryant’s long and illustrious career. And his fellow teammates at the time remember it pretty vividly.

Also read: “Kobe Bryant is Constantly Disrespected”: Quentin Richardson and Kevin Durant’s Appalling Reactions to GOAT Debate 

Kobe Bryant almost left LA in 2007 and his teammates were furious about it

The 12x All-Defensive Team and 2x scoring champ was in the prime of his career two years into Shaquille O’Neal’s exit from the ball club.

He won both his scoring titles and an MVP between 2005-08. But the first two of those three seasons ended with two first-round exits of the Lakers.

That wasn’t a team a young 3x NBA champ, who was chasing Michael Jordan, would expect himself to be in and that’s why he wanted to recruit better players, or he wanted out.

Also read: Shaquille O’Neal Admits Amazon’s $139 Billion Jeff Bezos’ Plan of Buying Phoenix Suns Scared Him

The man had to really put in a transfer request to prove his point and Luke Walton still has some memory of the time when the Lakers almost broke up.

“We don’t need him anyway. If he doesn’t want to be here. F**k him,” revealed Walton about the feeling of his teammates at the time, on the Lakers docu-series ‘Legacy: The True Story of LA Lakers’.

It wasn’t the first time Kobe threatened to get out

While doing a three-peat to start the century and a new era in the NBA, Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal started having a rocky relationship for determining whose team was it.

That led to the break-up of one of the greatest if not the best basketball duo of all time within 2 years after they won their last Championship in 2002 with O’Neal sweeping the 3 Finals MVPs.

That must have been the reason which prompted Kobe to ask the Lakers chose between him and Shaq. The lakers obviously picked 25-year-old Bryant as their future.

Otherwise, that would have turned out to be the time we saw Lakers’ number 24 probably wearing a Boston 24 or 8. Nothing would have been more hurtful for the Laker Nation.

Also read: Michael Jordan Once Revealed He’d Pay $5 to Watch Scottie Pippen Play Out Of Any NBA Players

About the author

Akash Murty

An Electrical and Electronics Engineer by degree, Akash Murty is an NBA Editor at The SportsRush. Previously a Software Engineer, Murty couldn’t keep himself away from sports, and his knack for writing and putting his opinion forward brought him to the TSR. A big Soccer enthusiast, his interest in basketball developed late, as he got access to a hoop for the first time at 17. Following this, he started watching basketball at the 2012 Olympics, which transitioned to NBA, and he became a fan of the game as he watched LeBron James dominate the league. Him being an avid learner of the game and ritually following the league for around a decade, he now writes articles ranging from throwbacks, and live game reports, to gossip. LA Lakers are his favourite basketball team, while Chelsea has his heart in football. He also likes travelling, reading fiction, and sometimes cooking.

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