Kobe Lakers pre-draft workout.

[VengefulAngel]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2108226-kobe-bryants-predraft-workout-has-become-stuff-of-lakers-and-nba-legend


Cool story, bros ^^

[Yankstar]

http://thumbs.hh.ulximg.com/public/img/song/500_1392438422_artworks_000070871291_fylzha_t200x2 00_56.jpg

[JellyBean]

:applause: Thanks for posting that article! That was awesome. I got goose bumps. This article, along with other books that I have read on Kobe, just gives me proof of why I have Kobe higher on my all-time NBA greats list. That was an awesome read. :applause

[JohnFreeman]

Top 15 player all time lock

[bergs14]

Enjoyed the read...but....

"The New Jersey Nets had just hired University of Massachusetts coach John Calipari, and after three awesome workouts to make absolutely sure that seeing was believing, Calipari was ready to pick Bryant when others were not.

But with the legendary Lakers and the L.A. spotlight beckoning, Bryant was able to stiff - arm the Nets . Bryant's family , West and West's close friend, Arn Tellem, who was Bryant's agent, banded together in threatening the Nets that Bryant would play in Italy if selected by New Jersey

[Nick Young]

[QUOTE=bergs14]Enjoyed the read...but....

"The New Jersey Nets had just hired University of Massachusetts coach John Calipari, and after three awesome workouts to make absolutely sure that seeing was believing, Calipari was ready to pick Bryant when others were not.

But with the legendary Lakers and the L.A. spotlight beckoning, Bryant was able to stiff - arm the Nets . Bryant's family , West and West's close friend, Arn Tellem, who was Bryant's agent, banded together in threatening the Nets that Bryant would play in Italy if selected by New Jersey

[raprap]

Kobe kobe :applause:

[BlkMambaGOAT]

Godbe:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:




Can't wait until he gets his 6th ring next year.:applause: :applause: :applause:

[JellyBean]

Godbe:bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown:




Can't wait until he gets his 6th ring next year.:applause: :applause: :applause:


:applause: The Lakers are going to do something big this off-season. It's just what they do.

[GimmeThat]

That bit just didn't sit with me right. I know it's already been well documented that there was a bit of tampering going on prior to him being drafted or whatever you want to call it but that just really irks me.


what would you tell the other teams if you knew for sure the Lakers would draft you and you are interested in playing for them.


as for why he cared so much about playing for the Lakers.

either he's a genius or he could have been the GOAT and made a retarded decision.

[VIntageNOvel]

what would you tell the other teams if you knew for sure the Lakers would draft you and you are interested in playing for them.


as for why he cared so much about playing for the Lakers.

either he's a genius or he could have been the GOAT and made a retarded decision.


actually its the city,
remember kobe got there first before shaq, and Lakers has been shitty for a while, so its not like he went to the stacked team

kobe also stated that he want to play with clippers, but they didnt want to gamble with HS kid

[GimmeThat]

actually its the city,
remember kobe got there first before shaq, and Lakers has been shitty for a while, so its not like he went to the stacked team

kobe also stated that he want to play with clippers, but they didnt want to gamble with HS kid


I guess he values his offseason more than others.

what's next? he got to LA before he met his future wife?

[Shade8780]

http://blogimages.thescore.com/tbj/files/2012/02/kobe-bryant-celtics-smile.jpg

[GimmeThat]

Eli Manning did the samething, chargers wanted to draft him, and he didn't want to go there and demanded the ny giants. Only difference is the chargers ended up drafting him, but trading him.


well, you are implying that ownerships can improve.

that might just be the scariest thought ever.
because I thought only the League could expand, and owners only have to adjust when that happens.

[NBAplayoffs2001]

actually its the city,
remember kobe got there first before shaq, and Lakers has been shitty for a while, so its not like he went to the stacked team

kobe also stated that he want to play with clippers, but they didnt want to gamble with HS kid

53-29 isn't that bad :confusedshrug:. That 97-98 team though should have gotten further then they did. 4 All Stars, wow!

[dynasty1978]

Question for the older heads: Who remembers Dontae Jones from Mississippi State? That dude was built like a grown a$$ man and played a physical game.

For a youngster like Kobe to destroy him (made him quit from what I've read before) is quite impressive.

[SOD 21]

Jerry West's summation was plain: "Best workout I've ever seen. He's better than anybody we have on the team right now. Let's go."

The Lakers had gone 53-29 the previous season behind Cedric Ceballos, Nick Van Exel, Elden Campbell, Vlade Divac and Eddie Jones.

[monkeypox]

[QUOTE=bergs14]Enjoyed the read...but....

"The New Jersey Nets had just hired University of Massachusetts coach John Calipari, and after three awesome workouts to make absolutely sure that seeing was believing, Calipari was ready to pick Bryant when others were not.

But with the legendary Lakers and the L.A. spotlight beckoning, Bryant was able to stiff - arm the Nets . Bryant's family , West and West's close friend, Arn Tellem, who was Bryant's agent, banded together in threatening the Nets that Bryant would play in Italy if selected by New Jersey

[monkeypox]

I was thinking that was unusually well written for Bleacher Report, then I realized it was done by Kevin Ding. He was the long time Laker Beat writer for the OC Register and he got downsized. Kind of sad that he ended up there, despite sometimes being a Kobe hater he was always a talented writer.

[HOoopCityJones]

Kobe stans are ignorant and pathetic just like their savior.

Wish you all would be wiped off the face of the earth.


Why don't you take that hater **** out your ass bitch?

[VIntageNOvel]

People make too much out of it. No mock draft had the Nets taking Kobe, no talk on usenet from fans suggested anyone was for it. Calipari admits that it was fear of messing up his first big move as much as it was anything that happened with Kobe and his agent. Kerry Kittles agent was pretty powerful too and leaned on the Nets and Calipari hard to take him 8th. He says David Falk pressuring him was the tipping point. Also even though they liked Kobe they didn't expect him to be good till his rookie contract was over and they expected him to bolt. Calipari thought Kittles would be a better player for at least 2-3 years, which was when he needed to prove himself as a new coach. He felt if they drafted Kobe, he may have been fired by the time Kobe developed. Despite all that the decision was in Calipari's hands and his GM tried to convince him to take Kobe, and he said he went with the safer choice in Kittles. There's more and less to the story than people think. It wasn't some nefarious power play that cheated the Nets out of Kobe. They just instilled enough doubt to make a rookie coach blink.

Anyone on the internet at the time will remember how crazy it was. Lots of people thought the Lakers were stupid to take Kobe when they did. Some thought it was a desperation move to clear space for Shaq since the Hornets were begging anyone that would listen to give them a serviceable big man for that pick. The Hornets didn't even know who they were picking for the Lakers till draft day, yet lots of people seem to think in an alternate universe Kobe would have been on the Hornets. That's not the case, they would have traded the pick to someone else or drafted someone else. Kobe wasn't on their radar.

this has been discussed before (i forgot the link)

i remember in different interview, kobe denied that he only wanted to go to Lakers and threaten to go to overseas

he said he was 17 years old kid with NBA dream, any team is fine

[VIntageNOvel]

oh read here for more detail

http://www.insidehoops.com/forum/showthread.php?t=320245

any poster saying kobe should have been a hornets is just ignorant kobe-haters

[VIntageNOvel]

this post should destroy some myth regarding kobe draft


Peter Vecsey


HOOP DU JOUR

Second of two parts.

Friday, when Kobe Bryant led the Lakers into Madison Square Garden, we looked back at the 1996 NBA Draft, and how so many teams could have been so wary/wrong about someone so gifted.

Today, Kobe discloses other draft dodgers and dissers.

John Nash’s needle isn’t the only one stuck on the 1996 draft. That time period remains equally entrenched in Kobe Bryant’s consciousness. He finds some stuff that happened funny, other things exasperating and a couple occurrences outright incomprehensible.

I didn’t raise the subject; he did.



REUTERS

DEEP ’96’ed: Kobe Bryant felt shafted by a number of teams during the 1996 draft, leading eventually to his selection at No. 13 overall by the Hornets and immediate trade to the Lakers.




The one rubbing Bryant the rawest implicates Dave Cowens, then the Hornets’ coach. At some point soon after the Hornets selected Bryant with the No. 13 pick, the two had a private phone conversation that went something like this.

Cowens: “You know what the deal is, right?

Kobe: “Yes, I do.”

Cowens: “Well, that’s good, because we don’t need you anyway.”

Kobe is as stupefied and infuriated now as he was then.

“Can you believe someone would say something like that to a 17-year-old!” he says, his face one-third smile, one-third scowl and one-third sinister. “That really threw me. It really hurt. Especially since it came from him. I knew about Dave Cowens. I knew what a great player

he was. I followed his career. I looked up to him because he played so hard and showed so much passion. That spit just blew me away!”

Then again, by then, Bryant should have been accustomed to being disillusioned by Hall of Fame players. Twice he worked out for Clippers’ GM Elgin Baylor … and coach Bill Fitch. After the second, the two dream weavers invited Bryant to lunch.

“They told me it was the two best workouts they’d ever seen,” he said. “That’s it, I figured, I was going be a Clipper and play in L.A. I was pumped!”

Before Bryant had finished his fantasy, his magic carpet ride crashed. Out of nowhere, Baylor and Fitch flipped the switch.

“Your skill level is off the charts. Your athleticism is exceptional. And your energy and enthusiasm are remarkable,” they gushed. “But we can’t draft you.”

Huh? What! Why not?

“Because people out here won’t think we’re serious if we draft a high school kid at No. 7.”

So, Baylor and Fitch showed they meant business by plucking Memphis center Lorenzen Wright (whose July 2010 murder remains unsolved).

Bryant never had any reason to believe he would wind up playing in nearby Philadelphia for the 76ers, holders of the draft’s oceanfront lot. There was little doubt Allen Iverson would be the top pick. Yet GM Brad Greenberg invited Kobe in, anyway, for a test run.
“I guess they saw some of my high school games. That was the only explanation I could think of for not being asked to shoot or dribble or demonstrate any of my skills” Bryant said. “All they wanted me to do was to sprint the court. They timed me on a stop watch.”

Greenberg told Bryant him Iverson had run faster.

“So?!?!” Kobe exclaimed.

On the day of the draft, or just before it, Philly columnist John Smallwood implored the Sixers to draft Kobe.

“He said they’d regret it forever if they didn’t,” Kobe recalled.

“The funny thing is, he was on my ass for one thing or another my whole senior year. The Sixers were so bad I guess that’s why he turned his attention on me. And then in the end, for some reason he changed his opinion about me. He’s looking pretty good.”


DEEP ’96’ed: Kobe Bryant felt shafted by a number of teams during the 1996 draft, leading eventually to his selection at No. 13 overall by the Hornets and immediate trade to the Lakers.


Greenberg disputes Bryant’s version. In an email he said the workout consisted of more than running.

“He did shooting drills and other stuff ... had a great workout,” Greenberg wrote. “I just thought Iverson [was] a better selection at the time. I wasn’t comfortable going with a HS kid for the No. 1 pick vs. Iverson.”

Bryant estimates receiving well over 500 scholarship offers. Some were from colleges in places he never knew existed whose courses and schedules are completed online. Each day during a break, he would glide into Lower Marion H.S. coach Gregg Downer’s office and pick up the latest batch of recruitment letters.

One jutted out above the rest. It was from Dean Smith, not a form letter from the University of North Carolina, mind you, but a hand-written message from the aristocrat coach.

“I couldn’t wait to read it, but I didn’t want to do it with people looking over my shoulder,” recounted a roused Bryant . “So I opened it quietly during English class while the teacher was talking.”

Smith said he had heard how well Kobe had played against UNC’s Jerry Stackhouse (third pick of ’95 draft, by the 76ers) and knew it was all but certain he would turn pro when he graduated.

“However, by any chance, if you change your mind, I want you to know I’m holding a scholarship for you.”

Does Bryant still have the letter?

“Are you kidding, bro! Of course, I still have it! It’s from Dean bleepin’ Smith!”

If Dean Smith couldn’t entice Bryant to play for UNC, what chance did John Calipari and the Nets have of getting him to New Jersey vs. skipping off to Italy, which was the threat by agent Arn Tellem?

“Naw,” Kobe countered, “had the Nets drafted me, I would’ve played there and wouldn’t have tried to force a trade. I was 17, bro, I just wanted to ball.”

Oh, great, now he tells them. So, what would have happened had he become a Net?

“Calipari probably would still be coach,” Bryant said.
















The Hornets were not drafting Kobe if it were not for the trade. The Lakers basically drafted him.

[NBASTATMAN]

If Kobe would have won 5 titles with the Nets he would be considered as good as MJ at this point.. Too bad would have been great to see him on the east coast... :rockon:

[Marchesk]

:applause: The Lakers are going to do something big this off-season. It's just what they do.

Trade Kobe for Lebron?

[dubeta]

Meh. LeBron was too good to even have a draft workout