Shaq allegedly threatened to 'murder' Kobe Bryant in 2004
Oral history details the falling out of Kobe and the Big Diesel in 2004.
By
Matt Moore
•
3 min read
It's not a secret that Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant did not get along at the end of their Lakers run. Bryant wanted his name as the star of the franchise, and was frustrated that the big man would come to camp out of shape and not push through the season. O'Neal felt he was still most dominant and took umbrage at the young fella's attitude. It eventually exploded, with Bryant winning out and O'Neal being traded to Miami.
It resulted in one of the greatest What Ifs in sports, "What if Kobe Bryand and Shaq had been able to co-exist?" Could they have won three, four more titles together? Bryant went on to win two more, O'Neal one, but that early 00's Lakers team, despite being fairly outdated in today's terms, was one of the most dominant we've seen.
In an extensive oral history of the 2003-2004 season, their last together, Bleacher Report profiles in explicit detail how the relationship became fractured. Most shocking was this from Lakers PR man John Black who said that after an argument O'Neal threatened to "murder" Bryant. This is from Lakers PR man John Black:
John Black: Mostly it was Shaq and Kobe didn’t like each other, but it didn’t affect them on the court. They would say something about the other, on or off the record, but it didn’t become confrontational more than two or three times over the eight years. When Kobe gave the statement to Jim Gray where he went off calling Shaq fat and lazy, that was one of the times. There was one really bad one, early on. Brian Shaw had to pull them apart. Shaq threatened to murder Kobe.
Source: An Oral History of the 2003-2004 Los Angeles Lakers, the First Super Team | Bleacher Report.
Wow, what a soundbyte! But I have a hard time thinking that Shaquille O'Neal, no matter his physical intensity or whatever previous situations he was accused (and never charged let alone convicted) of being a part of, would really openly and seriously threaten the life of a teammate, no matter how bad their relationship had become. I'm sure O'Neal has threatened to murder a lot of people in his time, and don't get me wrong, if Shaq said he wanted to murder me I would move to the desert and live in a box underground.
It does speak to how bad the situation became though. Bryant summed it up nicely, again, from the same piece:
Kobe Bryant: I wasn’t going to play with Shaq anymore after that. That just wasn’t going to happen. Things he had said, criticism from the media in saying I can’t win without him. Look, I put that individual s--t aside to win championships and now I’m getting criticized for it. Now I’m going to show you f--ks what I can do on my own. So that challenge, I was going to answer that challenge no matter what—whether I was going to stay in L.A. or go somewhere else, I was going to answer that challenge.
Source: An Oral History of the 2003-2004 Los Angeles Lakers, the First Super Team | Bleacher Report.
O'Neal pushed the narrative that Bryant needed him. Bryant's entire life ethos is built on the concept that he doesn't need anyone. It was never going to last between the two of them. Lakers fans should feel fortunate they got championships out of it. Fire and dynamite are two useful elements, but you can't put them in the same room for very long until the whole thing blows up.
Interesting side note: How would that 2004 team stack up with today's Warriors? Shaq would pulverize inside but the Warriors' speed and 3-point shooting might simply outpace the Lakers' outdated model. Let us know in the comments.
