Former Los Angeles Lakers stars Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal formed one of the more dominant tandems in NBA history. After all, Los Angeles won three titles in a row and reached four NBA Finals with Bryant and O’Neal in the fold. However, that doesn’t mean the two always saw eye to eye.
Former NBA big man Olden Polynice, who played for five teams across 15 seasons in the league, revealed an instance when Bryant and O’Neal exchanged trash-talk before their exchange infamously escalated into something physical.
“So, we’re at Southwest College, right, playing,” Polynice said. “I’m trying to get — I’m a Laker fan. I wanna be on the Lakers. I gotta be around the Lakers. So, I’m working — we working out. I’m guarding Shaq, blah, blah, blah. Basket, ‘Yeah, this is my team, motherf—–.’ Basket down there, ‘Yeah, naw, naw, this is my team.’
“It’s going back and forth between the two of ’em. Okay, no problem. I mean, that’s us. We’re ballers. Mitch Kupchak’s sitting over there chilling with Laker brass, and all of a sudden, there’s a dead ball.
“They just going back and forth, but I’m thinking it’s still part of the crap that we do. ‘Nah, motherf—–, I’ll kick your —.’ I’m like, ‘Oh s—, okay. Are they about to fight?'”
From there, Polynice explained that O’Neal wound up to hit Bryant, but Polynice shoved Bryant out of harm’s way. Polynice seemingly took the brunt of the hit from O’Neal, with the swing reaching across the top of his head and landing around his ear area.
Polynice added that O’Neal basically started chasing Bryant, so Polynice grabbed the big man to help defuse the situation. Someone else then stepped in and grabbed Bryant.
It makes sense if O’Neal and Bryant had disagreements over certain topics, including who the leader of the team was, as they were both such great players during their time together on the Lakers.
O’Neal was maybe the most dominant player in the league at the time of his Lakers stint, as teams had no answer for his interior scoring chops. He scored 27 points per game during his Lakers tenure and led the league in field-goal percentage numerous times with the storied franchise.
Bryant was a similarly dominant scorer, though he scored the ball in different ways than O’Neal did and brought a lot to the table as a facilitator on offense as well.
Both O’Neal and Bryant proved later on in their careers that they didn’t always need one another to win at a high level in the NBA. O’Neal helped the Miami Heat win their first championship in franchise history in 2006, while Bryant helped the Lakers to back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010.
In the end, Bryant retired from the league with more titles than O’Neal. The former won five over the course of his incredible playing career, while O’Neal won four and didn’t reach the NBA’s mountaintop again after the year 2006.
O’Neal retired after he suited up for the Boston Celtics in the 2010-11 season, and Bryant hung up his jersey following the 2015-16 campaign having spent his entire NBA career in Los Angeles.