The Los Angeles Lakers flirted many times with the possibility of parting ways with Kobe Bryant and taking a different route. The Black Mamba was close to being traded in 2007, as he revealed he was set to join the Chicago Bulls. He was also linked with the Detroit Pistons, but his doubts made Dr. Jerry Buss shut down the offer.
Kobe is the greatest Laker of all time, but that doesn’t mean he was close to becoming a part of a different team. Even when he was feeling good in Los Angeles, the team also thought about dealing with him and seeing what they could get for Kobe. Hell, he was almost traded for LeBron James.
There was a moment in time when the new boss of the team allegedly saw Kobe as a part of the past of the team and wanted to focus on a different player he thought would be the future of the Lakers.
Jim Buss Didn’t Think Kobe Bryant Was Fit To Lead Los Angeles Lakers
After 2011, when Phil Jackson retired as a head coach following a shocking sweep by the eventual champions Dallas Mavericks in the second round of the postseason, the Lakers were ready to move on and find the right person to take over from Jackson and try to win more titles with the Purple and Gold.
It seems like Jim Buss didn’t want to just replace Jackson as the team’s head coach, but Kobe as the superstar of the same. According to Brian Shaw, who was recommended by Jackson as his potential replacement, Jim wanted to make Andrew Bynum the face of the franchise and was willing to trade anybody on the roster, including Kobe.
Via Basketball Network:
“I did my interview with Dr. Buss at his house. Dr. Buss told me, ‘In order for Jimmy to grow in his role, I have to step back and allow him to do what is best for the team going forward’. The rest of the meeting was mainly Jimmy doing a lot of the talking. He gave me the outlook of his team and that Andrew Bynum is the guy that’s gonna carry this team to the next era of Laker dominance. And he said everybody on the team including Kobe, could go if it came down to it because it was going to be Andrew who was gonna carry everything forward,” Shaw said in episode 9 of Legacy: The True Story of the Los Angeles Lakers documentary.
The Lakers have been close to making some questionable decisions over the course of the years. Fortunately, their crazy ideas didn’t go through in most cases. Otherwise, we would be talking about a big disaster.
If Jim really traded Kobe and gave the keys to the car to Bynum, he would have been destroyed faster than he actually was. Trading Kobe away would’ve been just too much, even for him and his bad decisions. As we all know now, Kobe retired a Laker in 2016, giving a masterpiece in his last game, before having his two jerseys retired by the team.
