How Kobe Bryant almost ended up on the Celtics
Imagine, for a second, that Kobe Bryant never put on a purple-and-gold Los Angeles Lakers jersey.
As Bryant prepares to play in his last regular-season game in Boston Wednesday night, imagine an alternate universe in which he donned his favorite color: green. Kobe Bryant as the star of the Boston Celtics. Bryant, not Paul Pierce, as the heir to Larry Bird. Think about how much Boston fans would love him and how he might be viewed differently across the league.
As crazy as it sounds -- and with apologies to Lakers fans -- it almost happened.
In a recent feature for ESPN.com, Baxter Holmes documented how the Celtics almost chose Kobe Bryant instead of Antoine Walker with the No. 6 pick in the 1996 NBA Draft.
Celtics head coach and executive vice president/director of basketball operations M.L. Carr and legendary team president Red Auerbach went back and forth on whether to draft Bryant or not, with Carr holding the final say. Boston was impressed with Bryant’s pre-draft workout. He reminded them of a young Michael Jordan, and his interview showed he was an avid student of the game and mature far beyond his years:
"If you closed your eyes and thought a little bit, you might have thought you were watching Michael Jordan," says then-Celtics general manager Jan Volk. "He did everything well -- beyond well. He was exceptional in everything that he did. And then we commented, as I recall, on how reminiscent he was of Michael."
"I can't think of any other way to describe his workout," says Weitzman, "other than he was exceptional."
But with the 1995-96 Celtics having had a 33-49 season, the franchise -- which endured a lull in the mid-'90s -- was dying to get back to the NBA mountaintop and didn't want to wait around for an 18-year-old to develop in two to three years. High-school draft picks were viewed as risks at the time -- the only successful ones were big men, anyway -- and the Celtics needed to secure a star.
So instead, the Celtics decided to trade up from No. 9 to No. 6 to ensure they drafted one of the "Super Six of '96," which included Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen and Walker (the top six picks in the draft). Bryant, of course, ended up being far better than any of those six, though Iverson and Allen put together Hall of Fame careers.
Though reports have long claimed Bryant and his agent Arn Tellum were selective in the teams he was willing to play for, the Celtics said they were never told Bryant might not suit up for them or anyone else. In fact, they thought he fit in perfectly as a Celtic. They didn't even know he grew up as a die-hard Lakers fan:
Deep down, Bryant was a die-hard Lakers fan, but the Celtics say they weren't aware of that at the time -- nor did Bryant relay that fact to them at any point. "Kobe didn't give that up in the interview," Carr says.
Says Volk, "We had no reason to believe he wouldn't play for the Celtics or whatever team would draft him."
"He never said, 'Do anything you can do to get me.' He said, 'I would love to be with the Celtics,'" Carr says. "It wasn't anything over the top other than, 'I would love to be a part of this great tradition.' He said all the right things. He sounded like a Celtic."
Perhaps the most interesting part of the story is that Bryant wasn't aware that the Celtics almost drafted him or that Auerbach even knew who he was. Upon hearing that, he told Holmes that's "the coolest [bleeping] story ever."
Despite his lifelong allegiance to the Lakers, Bryant said he would've gladly carried the Celtics' torch:
"I would've tried to carry on Bird's legacy," Bryant says without hesitation. "Absolutely. I would've done it with a tremendous amount of pride and honor."
