Former Golden State Warriors GM Dave Twardzik didn’t exactly endorse Kobe Bryant as a star rookie heading into the NBA but asked him to go back to college instead.
After scouting a 17-year-old Kobe, Twardzik wasn’t happy man with how the future Lakers star behaved as a professional.
According to SFGate: “He’s not ready. He kept complaining to the referees that the ball was slippery,” Twardzik said. “It was a new ball, and league rules prevented the officials from replacing it. Deal with it. Except that Kobe didn’t.”
He further added that one of the teams in the NBA would take a chance on Kobe anyway. At 6 feet 6, Twardzik believed that Kobe’s skillset would be the one making a huge difference to teams that would look for a potential shooting guard, and despite his doubts, there was a team that indeed took him.
As a result, he decided to draft Todd Fulle instead. Twardzik’s decision ended up costing him his job before next year’s NBA Draft. After all, he picked a player who was out of the NBA after just five seasons and didn’t even average more than 5 points per game during any of the time he played.
At the other end, with the 13th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft, the Charlotte Hornets selected Kobe out of Lower Merion High School in Philadelphia. On a draft day trade, they sent him to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Vlade Divac. The rest, as they say, was history. Kobe spent 20 seasons in the NBA. And during his decorated career, he won practically everything with the Lakers.
Kobe Bryant Revealed That The Charlotte Hornets Never Wanted Him In The First Place
On his part, Kobe revealed how his draft day went down. According to ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, the Black Mamba said the Hornets never wanted him.
“Charlotte never wanted me,” Bryant said. “Hornets coach Dave Cowens told me he didn’t want me. It wasn’t a question of me even playing here. They had a couple of guards already, a couple of small forwards already. So it wasn’t like I would be off the bench much. “
“I knew who Dave Cowens was and pretty excited to play for him. Then I was like, ‘Oh, all right.’ I quickly transitioned from smiley kid to killer instinct. Cowens told me, ‘We don’t really need you here,'” Bryant added.
Not that the Lakers weren’t happy. They knew what they would get with Kobe as Jerry West, then the LA GM already had big plans for the Black Mamba to play alongside Shaq and transform the side into bonafide championship contenders.
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