Jeanie Buss will fire anyone who said free agents don’t want to play with Kobe Bryant

Los Angeles Lakers president Jeanie Buss on made some strong comments on Thursday in response to the recent ESPN the Magazine story that was written about Kobe Bryant. For starters, Buss said that any team employee who contributed to the feature — which claimed Bryant deters free agents from signing with the Lakers — will be fired.

“I read the story,” Buss said during a SportsCenter interview on Thursday. “I don’t agree with any of it. If there is somebody that’s on our payroll who is saying things like that, I’ll soon get to the bottom of it, and they won’t be working for us anymore.”

For the most part, it seemed like Henry Abbott’s sources were rival team executives and agents who represent star players. However, Abbott cited “Lakers insiders” who allegedly told him about Kobe missing the Lakers’ meeting with Carmelo Anthony and nearly alienating Steve Nash in 2012.

And if there are any players who chose not to sign with the Lakers because they didn’t want to deal with Kobe, Buss said she would not want them on her team anyway.

“Any free agent that would be afraid to play with Kobe Bryant is probably a loser, and I’m glad they wouldn’t come to the team,” she said.

Buss also discussed Anthony specifically, saying he chose to remain with the Knicks because he is from New York and is looking to fulfill a mission. As we showed you before, Carmelo really isn’t from New York, but that’s beside the point.

When Kobe was asked about Abbott’s story earlier this week, he basically said he doesn’t let press like that bother him. Either Bryant did a better job of hiding it, or Buss was much more annoyed than he was.