Phil Jackson revealed who would win between Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant if they played a 1-on-1 game. Kobe and Jordan had extremely similar styles of play, with Bryant admitting that he modeled his after Jordan’s. That prompted a lot of people to wonder who would win a duel between the teacher and the student and the one that coached them both revealed who would have won if they went one-on-one.
Back in 2014, Jackson settled the debate between Jordan and Kobe, claiming that MJ would beat Kobe. During an appearance on Fox Sports, Jackson answered some questions on who would win in hypothetical 1-on-1 matchups. They talked about a lot of players but everybody wanted to know who he considered was going to win if Jordan and Kobe went at it (2:00 mark).
“This is an interesting situation because about 2000 I had a team, I’m coaching Lakers. Michael’s out, he’s been retired for a year and he comes to ball game and I said ‘let’s be in your chairman’s room after the game, I want you to talk to Kobe a little bit.’ He intends to take over the game at a certain time in the game and I think you could convince him to just wait, just be patient, allow the game to kinda come to him when it’s necessary for him to some things because the team kind of losses his offensive direction,’ so I get in this room and he sits down, first thing Kobe says is ‘I could kick your ass one-on-one.'”
“[The winner] is gonna be MJ. He’s got that hand, he’s got the glove. When a guy can pick the ball up with one hand when he’s dribbling, like you know Michael could do and do that and take the ball at the basket is very difficult.”
Well, if Phil Jackson himself picked MJ as the winner of this dream matchup, who are we to disagree with him? Sadly, we never got to see Kobe and Michael going one-on-one and we’ll never do since Bryant was killed in a fatal helicopter crash in January, leaving a huge void in the basketball world, including Michael Jordan, who saw Kobe as his little brother.
