The Sacramento Kings experienced a brief period of prosperity in the early 2000s, and iconic point guard Mike Bibby was a major part of their identity. In a recent chat on the ‘Straight Game’ podcast, he was asked if he ever thought about teaming up with Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers, and his answer came with no hesitation.
“No. The rivalry that we had going against them was real,” said Bibby. “We hated them. Outside of the court, it was fine, but we hated the Lakers. They hated us, we hated them, and that’s just the way it was. I wouldn’t have joined them.”
Despite Bibby’s hatred for the Lakeshow, he was apparently almost sent there via trade toward the end of his career. He spoke to Kobe and everything before the Kings ultimately reneged on the deal.
“I talked to Kobe one time; I forgot what year it was. But our owners went back on not putting me in the same division that the Kings were in, so that kind of fell through.”
While the Kings and Lakers are not rivals today, they were bitter enemies during Bibby’s era. From Bibby and Chris Webber to Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic, everyone on that Kings team despised the purple and gold for very good reason.
Besides being competitors in the same division, it was their clash in the 2002 West Finals that really defined their relationship. That series is notorious for several reasons, and it only furthered the divide between the two franchises.
The Kings, who finished first in the West at 61-21, were among the favorites to win the title, but they faced a major test against Kobe and Shaq’s Lakers. In an impressive feat, they had LA down 3-2 and only needed to win one of the next two games to advance to the Finals. To top it off, Bibby was going off in the series with averages of 22.7 points, 3.6 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game on 44.5% shooting.
Of course, the showdown ended up going seven games, and the Lakers came out on top in a highly controversial victory. Due to suspicious officiating in Game 6, where the Lakers had 27 free throw attempts to the Kings’ nine, skeptics claim that the series was rigged and that Bibby’s team was robbed of its chance at a ring. Even former NBA referee Tim Donaghy claimed that the game was fixed and that the refs were told to “make sure” the Lakers won.
There’s no concrete evidence that the Lakers’ victory was rigged, but the Kings saw enough to feel that they were wronged by the NBA. Since that series, their rivalry turned into pure hatred, and it explains why Bibby wouldn’t have thought about joining them at the time.
So when the Lakers came calling years later, Mike Bibby (even all those years later) must have felt relieved that the team owners decided to send him to Atlanta instead. That series still lingers in his mind, and to join the enemy directly after something like that would have felt like the ultimate betrayal.
Today, there’s nothing that truly compares to the level of hatred that the Kings felt for the Lakers. It was a rivalry in every sense of the word, and not even a chance to team up with Kobe Bryant would have swayed Bibby into joining the bandwagon like Kevin Durant did in 2016.
