Shaquille O'Neal is currently a broadcaster on television and Kobe Bryant is entering his possible last season in the NBA. More than a decade ago Shaq and Kobe combined to be one of the best duos the NBA had ever seen on the court. The problem for Shaq and Kobe was that they didn't like each other much off the court and they couldn't make it work long enough for us to know how many championships they could have won together.
Shaq and Kobe haven't had to really discuss their situation together publicly until now. Kobe was on Shaq's podcast, The Big Podcast With Shaq, which will be broadcast on Monday and in the interview they reportedly spoke openly about their past and some of the regrets they may have had, according to Tyler Conway of Bleacher Report.
"A lot of stuff was said out of the heat of the moment, I guarantee I don't remember a lot of stuff that they said, because I changed my thought process of, you know what, we won three out of four, what the hell are you all talking about, this is not really even a story," said Shaq.
Bryant and Shaq were teammates with the Los Angeles Lakers from 1996 through 2004 and they dominated during that run winning four NBA titles including three in a row from 2000-2002. Both players are surefire Hall of Famer's and a couple of the best players of all time but their inability to get along deprived fans of seeing how much success they could have had if they would have been able to work it out.
Shaq was traded to the Miami Heat after the Lakers won the championship in 2004 and he went on to win a championship there while Kobe would win two more with the Lakers but who knows how many rings each guy would have if Shaq was able to stay with the Lakers. For his part, Kobe regrets it and thinks he made some immature decisions.
"Here's the thing though, when you say it at the time you actually mean it and then when you get older you have more perspective and you're like holy s-t, I was an idiot when I was a kid. To me, the most important thing was really just keep your mouth shut. You don't need to go to the press with stuff. You keep it internal and we have our arguments and our disagreements, but I think having our debates within the press was something I wish would've been avoided, but it did kind of create this whirlwind around us as a team with myself and Shaq and the press and the media that just put so much pressure on us as an organization," said Kobe.
It's great to see that Kobe and Shaq seem to have put the past behind them and they could now get along with one another now but many basketball fans will always have the thought in their mind of how great those two could have been had they just stayed together.
