IFWT_CP3 Kobe

Two words became infamous and made former NBA commissioner David Stern the most-hated man by the Lakers fanbase, “basketball reasons”.  That was his excuse for nixing a deal that would send Chris Paul to the LA Lakers to team up with Kobe Bryant.  Paul eventually ended up with the LA Clippers instead, and prior to Bryant and Paul facing off for the final time, they both reflected on what could have been.

“You know me. My dream isn’t to win games,” Bryant recalled to ESPN this week. “It’s like, ‘How many of these titles are we going to win [together]?’ Because if we don’t win, we’re a failure.”

“It was crazy,” Paul told ESPN this week. “It was exciting. We talked about potentially being teammates and all that stuff like that. Then, in the blink of an eye, gone.”

“It worked for the Olympic team and stuff like that,” Paul said. “I played in a lot of All-Star Games with Kobe. I don’t know how many, but I remember one of them, we said, ‘As long as we’re both on the same team playing this game, we’re not going to lose,’ just because we both know how competitive we are.”

Bryant agreed.

“When we played together in every All-Star Game, we never f—– around,” Bryant said. “It was like, ‘Listen, the guys have their fun, but now let’s do what we do.’ I knew how competitive he was, and I knew it would be a perfect fit. We just kind of talked about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to scheme to get things done. Unfortunately, it never happened.”

“Things would’ve been very, very, very different around here,” Bryant said, “with two of the most competitive people the league has ever seen.”

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