Kobe Bryant wanted to join Michael Jordan with the Wizards
When Kobe Bryant wanted to leave LA, he wanted to learn from Michael Jordan in Washington.
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3 min read
Kobe Bryant wanted to team up with Michael Jordan. On the Washington Wizards. Allow that to sink in for a second.
No, this isn't a joke. Back when Bryant wanted to part ways with the Los Angeles Lakers, he hoped to unite with Jordan in Washington. The Washington Post's Michael Lee has the story:
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.”
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“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.”
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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.
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“We would’ve put together a great team and we would’ve won championships,” Bryant said. “Listen, man. There are not a lot of players in this league that say, ‘Come hell or high water, we’re going to get this [expletive] done.’ People can look around and joke around about winning, saying they want to win. For me, it’s a matter of life or death. It was that important to me. And if it’s that important to me, I’m going to get there.”
You know what happened instead. Jordan had nothing to do with the Wizards by the summer of 2004, when the Lakers traded Shaquille O'Neal to the Miami Heat and re-signed Bryant to a seven-year deal. Bryant demanded a trade in 2007, but relented when the front office acquired Pau Gasol.
Bryant said he looks for front offices to be committed to winning and Jordan was "obviously a championship-or-bust man." That might indeed be Jordan's approach, but his record as an executive has been less than stellar, especially early on. For that reason, it's hard to get on board with Bryant's assertion that Washington definitely would have won championships if he'd gone there. It's not the least bit surprising that he thinks this, though.
This is one of the weirder NBA what-ifs just because it involves picturing Bryant in a non-Lakers uniform. This would have completely changed the power dynamics of the league in the late 2000s. Maybe Bryant would have been teammates with Gilbert Arenas. Maybe Jordan would have kept playing into his 40s. Maybe the Wizards would have actually won multiple championships. Maybe they'd be the franchise paying Bryant $25 million next season. My brain can't handle any of this.
