For over a week now, Shaquille O’Neal had been teasing the release of his official podcast which was going to include a sit down with former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant.
Today the Shaq and Kobe podcast finally was released to the masses and there were a lot of interesting pieces of news that surfaced from the interview.
It’s well worth a listen for any basketball fan – but in terms of the Lakers, there were a few sticking points that probably will make the headlines.
Some of those include:
While Kobe doesn’t think his beef with Shaq was bad for the Lakers (say what?!?), he did admit that he was ready to fight Shaquille O’Neal at any point and time during their tenure together.
“In ’99, two things happened,” he said, “I think Shaq realized that this kid is really competitive and he’s a little crazy. And then, I realized that I probably had a couple screws loose because we got into a fistfight and I actually was willing to get into a fistfight with this man. I went home and I was like, ‘I got to be the dumbest or the most courageous kid on the face of the earth.'”
Perhaps Kobe would have rethought his stance though if he knew Shaq was going to threaten to kill him, which was also revealed – though somewhat known already.
Both Bryant and O’Neal went on to say they regretted how things ended up and feel that they could have been the best duo in NBA history had they stayed together. In the same breath, Kobe admitted that he probably would have had a difficult time remaining with the Lakers had Shaq stayed and likely would have ventured for greener pastures.
“How many years would Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain be playing together with Wilt in his prime and Michael wanting to come up?” he said. “How long is that going to last before Michael says, ‘You know what? It’s time for me to show…?’ That’s why he and I are one of a kind when it comes to tandems. You literally had two Alpha males playing together on one team, and that normally does not happen.”
Both agreed the best Lakers team they played on was in 2001, and while Kobe didn’t mind Shaq winning elsewhere, O’Neal suggested that he was angry about Bryant winning two additional titles without him.
All that said, O’Neal made the point obvious throughout the podcast – he does not hate Kobe Bryant and doesn’t want anybody to think such while Kobe says he couldn’t care less what people think about their relationship.
