Saw this - posted it - boom!
Shaq says Kobe, sexual assault case blew apart Lakers
Kurt Helin
http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.c...akers/related/
The reports of any truce between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal have been greatly exaggerated. Actually, where there any such reports?
Now that he is out of the game, Shaq has a new tell all book coming out: Shaq Uncut: My Story. Jackie MacMullan did the writing and it comes out Nov. 15. Should be interesting.
Deadspin got some excerpts, including the parts where Shaq says Kobe’s Colorado sexual assault charges blew up the three-peat Lakers. (Go read the whole thing, you want to see the part where young Kobe says he’s “going to be the Will Smith of the NBA.”)
--QUOTE FROM SOON TO BE RELEASED BOOK--
So I’m on edge because I don’t have I don’t have a new deal, and Kobe is on edge because he might be going to jail, so we’re taking it out on each other. Just before the start of the ’03-’04 season the coach staff called us in and said, “No more public sparring or you’ll get fined.” … Phil was tired of it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton were sick of it. … So what happens? Immediately after that Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn’t even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was “lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free.” I’m sitting there watching this interview and I’m gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we’d stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, “I’m going to kill him.”
——-
Kobe stands up and goes face-to-face with me and says, “You always said you’re my big brother, you’d do anything for me, and then this Colorado thing happens and you never even called me.” I did call him. … So here we are now, and we find out he really was hurt that we didn’t stand behind him. That was something new. I didn’t think he gave a rat’s ass about us either way. “Well, I thought you’d publicly support me, at least,” Kobe said. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”
Brian Shaw chimed in with “Kobe, why would you think that? Shaq had all these parties and you never showed up for any of them. We invited you to dinner on the road and you didn’t come. Shaq invited you to his wedding and you weren’t there. Then you got married and didn’t invite any of us. And now you are in the middle of this problem, this sensitive situation, and now you want all of us to step up for you. We don’t even know you.” …
Everyone was starting to calm down when I told Kobe, “If you ever say anything like what you said to Jim Gray ever again, I will kill you.”
Kobe shrugged and said, “Whatever.”
--END OF QUOTE FROM UPCOMING BOOK--
Shaq deserves some of the blame for that Lakers team breaking up, too. And not just because he ran down the court at a preseason game yelling “pay me” at owner Jerry Buss (although that didn’t help).
That was Shaq’s locker room at the time and Kobe was the brash young kid. Shaq needled Kobe, pushed on him and Phil Jackson sided with Shaq because in the end he needed the locker room and the veterans to win. That just exacerbated the issues. (When Jackson returned to the Lakers and it was Kobe’s locker room, Jackson patched up that relationship because he needed Kobe.) Shaq was not mature and accommodating, he was Shaq. He helped push that divide.
But the part about Kobe keeping those guys at arm’s length? Spot on. And the team didn’t like it.
And Shaq still doesn’t, apparently.