13 years after a feud between Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal led to the breakup of one of the NBA’s most dynamic duos, the two shared stories about their bickering Lakers days and why it all fell apart.
Bryant, entering his 20th season with the LA Lakers, and O’Neal, an NBA analyst on TNT, reminisced on O’Neal’s podcast about those turbulent moments with the purple-and-gold from 1999-2004.
As podcast ends, Shaq tells Kobe, “I love you, brother. And I miss you..I wish we could’ve got to 7 championships, but it is what it is."
— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) August 31, 2015
Bryant went on O’Neal’s “The Big Podcast with Shaq,” which was made available Monday, and recalled how vicious some of their attacks were against each other.
“When you say it at the time, you actually mean it,” Bryant said. “And then when you get older, you have more perspective, you’re like, ‘Holy . . . I was an idiot as a kid.’ To me, the most important thing is you keep your mouth shut. There’s no need to go to the press. You keep it internal.
“We have our arguments and our disagreements. But I think . . . having our debates within the press was something I wished would been avoided.”
By Glenn Erby
