It’s easy and convenient to forget now, but there was a time that Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant didn’t “bleed purple and gold.” In a sprawling story by Michael Lee of the Washington Post, Mamba confirms that he longed to team with idol Michael Jordan on the Washington Wizards in the early 2000s.
More than a decade ago, Bryant wanted to get away from Los Angeles, and the team he wanted to join was the Wizards, where he would join forces with his mentor Michael Jordan.
Those plans evaporated when then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin parted ways with Jordan in 2003, a year before Bryant became a free agent, but as Wizards fans pine over the idea of Kevin Durant coming to Washington as a free agent, the near-miss that was Kobe-to-DC finally can be shared.
“That’s true,” Bryant confirmed recently. “A long time ago? Yeah.”
Obviously, Bryant never realized his wish. Jordan’s relationship with the Wizards ended following his final game in 2003, and the Lakers ultimately chose Kobe in the budding feud between he and fellow superstar Shaquille O’Neal.
Bryant says the uncertainty of his future in Los Angeles – mostly due to O’Neal’s presence – caused him to consider playing with Jordan. That His Airness served as Kobe’s idol certainly encouraged that development, too:
“The challenge had been thrown down upon me, of not being able to win without Shaq. A public challenge never really bothered me too much, but he made a couple of comments as well. I think he called me Penny Hardaway Part 2 or something like that. So that’s what [ticked] me off,” Bryant said. “Then it was like, ‘Listen, you know the step back that I took to help us win championships. Let’s not get [expletive] confused. I can dominate on my own. I decided to stay here and win championships and sacrifice MVPs and scoring titles and all that stuff.’ So once that was said, it was like a line in the sand now…”
“I’ve always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I’ve been really, really big on that,” Bryant said. “Being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried to pick their brains and always tried to absorb knowledge. Obviously, being in that situation [with the Wizards], it would’ve helped having to be around him every day and so on.”
Though the asset-strapped Wizards were in no position to trade for Bryant, the opportunity to sign him as a free agent in 2004 existed.
However, Pollin’s decision to relieve Jordan of his front office duties the year prior dashed those dreams entirely. And despite MJ hanging up his Nikes, there reportedly remained a belief that his presence in the Washington organization could still sway Kobe to come to the nation’s capitol.
The Wizards never had the assets to discuss a trade for Bryant, so the only chance the organization would have had to make a run at him was when he became an unrestricted free agent in 2004. Jordan, however, wasn’t allowed to recruit Bryant because Pollin decided in May 2003, not to let him continue running the team. While Jordan’s ability to land Bryant was no guarantee, a person close to him said Jordan was “confident” he would have made it happen.
Bryant signed a seven-year contract with the Lakers in 2004 immediately after they traded O’Neal to the Miami Heat. It was just three years later that the league’s third all-time leading scorer publicly admitted his desire to be traded from Los Angeles. But the late Jerry Buss and Mitch Kupchak balked at Kobe’s wish, and swung a trade for Pau Gasol the ensuing season that changed the course of franchise and league history – ensuring his status as a lifelong Laker in the process.
That’s a story Los Angeles fans across the country like to gloss over. Will they do the same with this one? Either way, it certainly would have been fun to watch Jordan and this generation’s best approximation of him wear the same uniform.
Mark this down as yet another fascinating ‘what-if?’ in a league overflowing with them.
What do you think?
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