The late, great Kobe Bryant wasn’t considered a team player by many. On the contrary, people were often repulsed by his lone-wolf kind of mindset in a team sport. During the Kobe-Shaq era of Lakers basketball, the Mamba had upset a lot of people with his rudeness and propensity to disregard the coach’s orders. However, many aren’t aware that coach Phil Jackson was supposedly on the brink of resigning due to Kobe’s antics.
Advertisement
In his book Three-Ring Circus, Jeff Pearlman revealed how Jackson threatened to leave the franchise if they didn’t get rid of Kobe. Pearlman mentioned that it was during a game against the Nuggets that the veteran head coach decided that he had had enough of tolerating Kobe’s tantrums.
According to Pearlman, “Jackson scowled toward Bryant after a sloppy play led to a Nuggets bucket. ‘You can’t make that pass!’” However, Kobe didn’t think that he had made a mistake and instead advised the coach to teach better offense to the rest of the players, “You better teach those mother***ers how to run the offense.”
Jackson couldn’t handle the disrespect anymore and he called his agent, Todd Musburger, and told him that he was going to resign from his position. Musburger convinced him that resigning wasn’t a good idea and that if he wanted to address this issue, he should think of something else. Jackson then went to then Lakers General Manager, Mitch Kupchak’s office and demanded that Kobe should be traded.
He said, “I won’t coach this team next year if he is still here… He won’t listen to anyone. I’ve had it with this kid.”
The Lakers couldn’t trade Kobe as he was the face of the franchise at the time. But someone had to pay the price for Kobe being “un-coachable.” In June of 2004, the Lakers announced that the 11-time championship-winning coach would leave the franchise.
His high salary demand was cited as a reason behind that move. However, they ended up rehiring him in June of 2005.
Kobe didn’t like the way Phil Jackson talked about him
During the Kobe-Shaq era, the Lakers were the most successful team in the league. However, their on-court success didn’t tell the whole story as they were in constant turmoil behind the scenes. The two superstars weren’t getting along and everyone, including Jackson, was trying to find a solution for the same. At that time, Jackson’s media antics didn’t help him a lot.
During an interview with GQ in 2015, Kobe 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?”
While he understood the motive behind it, Kobe felt betrayed by coach Jackson. It wasn’t too long after that when he said to himself that he would not have any personal interactions with him anymore.
On the other hand, Jackson was also tired of dealing with Bryant’s diva all the time. The way Kobe treated his peers forced the Hall-of-Famer coach to put an ultimatum before the Lakers to trade Kobe.
