Kobe Bryant appears to consider the vetoed trade that would have brought Chris Paul to the Lakers as a huge missed opportunity.
In December 2011, the Lakers had a deal in place to bring Paul to L.A., but it was infamously vetoed by then-commissioner David Stern for “basketball reasons.” Now, as Bryant prepares to face off with Paul – who ended up with the crosstown Clippers instead – for the final time, he reminisced about what could have been.
“You know me. My dream isn’t to win games,” Bryant told ESPN’s Baxter Holmes about his feelings at the time of the deal. “It’s like, ‘How many of these titles are we going to win [together]?’ Because if we don’t win, we’re a failure.
“When we played together in every All-Star Game, we never f—– around,” Bryant added. “It was like, ‘Listen, the guys have their fun, but now let’s do what we do.’ I knew how competitive he was, and I knew it would be a perfect fit. We just kind of talked about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to scheme to get things done. Unfortunately, it never happened.”
Paul agreed that it was an exciting time.
“It was crazy,” Paul said. “It was exciting. We talked about potentially being teammates and all that stuff like that. Then, in the blink of an eye, gone.”
Bryant admitted that, while the two would have likely butted heads, their competition would have been healthy – and things would be significantly different with the Lakers had the trade not been vetoed.
“Things would’ve been very, very, very different around here,” Bryant said, “with two of the most competitive people the league has ever seen.”
The Paul ordeal changed the course of two franchises. The Lakers haven’t contended since their attempt at acquiring him failed, while the Clippers have become one of the better teams in the West instead. Bryant isn’t the only one who’s bitter about how things went down, and you can understand why.
