“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 Los Angeles representing the famous Purple and Gold, but he was a little insecure a couple of times.

Bryant was one of the few superstars in the league to play his entire career with a franchise. When a basketball player thinks of Los Angeles, he imagines basketball in the hands of The Black Mamba or Magic Johnson.

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

But the partnership that helped both parties bring out the best in each other might have been broken in the middle of Bryant’s long and illustrious career. And his teammates at the time remember him quite vividly.

Also read: “Kobe Bryant is constantly disrespected”: Quentin Richardson and Kevin Durant’s appalling reactions to the GOAT debate

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

The 12x All-Defensive Team and 2x scoring champion was in the prime of his career two years after Shaquille O’Neal’s departure from the baseball club.

He won both of his scoring titles and an MVP from 2005-08.

But the first two of those three seasons ended with two first-round exits for the Lakers.

That wasn’t a team that a young NBA champion, chasing Michael Jordan, would expect to be on and that’s why he wanted to draft better players, or he wanted to go out.

Also Read: Shaquille O’Neal Admits Jeff Bezos’s $139 Billion Phoenix Suns Buyout Plan Scared Him Off

The man really had to file a trade request to prove his point and Luke Walton still has some memory of the moment the Lakers almost broke up.

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

It was not the first time that Kobe threatened to leave

As they scored a hat-trick to start the century and a new era in the NBA, Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal began to have a rocky relationship over whose team it was.

That led to the breakup of one of the best, if not the best basketball duo of all time, two years after they won their last championship in 2002 with O’Neal sweeping all three Finals MVPs.

That must have been why Kobe asked the Lakers to choose between him and Shaq. The Lakers obviously chose the 25-year-old Bryant as his future.

Otherwise, that would have turned out to be the moment we saw the No. 24 Lakers probably wearing a Boston 24 or 8. Nothing would have been more painful for Laker Nation.

Also Read: Michael Jordan Once Revealed He Would Pay $5 To Watch Scottie Pippen Play Outside Any NBA Player