Kobe Bryant has spent his entire 19-year NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers, but the 17-time All-Star admitted that he considered moving to the Washington Wizards earlier in his career.
Bryant admitted to Michael Lee of Washington Post that he considered leaving the Lakers more than a decade ago, and wanted to team up with Michael Jordan, who was then playing for the Wizards after coming back from another retirement.
The 36-year-old superstar revealed that he strongly considered moving into another direction in early 2000s because of his feud with Shaquille O'Neal.
Bryant said that he was not bothered by talks back then that he cannot win a title without the hulking center, but was disappointed when O'Neal called him the second coming of Penny Hardaway, who was Shaq's sidekick when he was still playing for the Orlando Magic.
The Wizards had no attractive assets back then to acquire Bryant from the Lakers via a trade, which forced the Lakers superstar guard to wait until he becomes a free agent. However, the plan did not come to fruition after the Wizards parted with Jordan the year before the high-scoring guard hit free agency.
Bryant became an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2004 and received offers from different teams, but the Wizards did not put an offer on the table as Jordan was not allowed to recruit the then-26-year-old superstar.
The Philadelphia native eventually signed a seven-year deal worth $136 million to stay in Los Angeles after the Lakers decided to trade O'Neal to the Miami Heat to end the locker room dispute between the two superstars.
Bryant knew that moving to the Wizards will put him in a very different situation because the team was not as glamorous as Los Angeles. But the 19-year veteran revealed that he was convinced that moving to Washington would be great for his career because he will be mentored by Jordan.
"I've always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I've been really, really big on that, being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried to pick their brains and always tried to absorb knowledge," said Bryant, who recently surpassed Jordan on NBA's all-time scoring list.
Had he joined Jordan in Washington, Bryant is convinced that they could have formed a team capable of winning it all that year, knowing that Jordan is very determined to build a very competitive team.
