National Basketball Association

Kobe Bryant wanted to play with Michael Jordan's Wizards

Published Jan. 27, 2015 5:57 p.m. ET

Jovan Buha

It's no secret that Kobe Bryant has meticulously tailored his game after Michael Jordan, but there was once a time when the superstar shooting guard contemplated joining forces with his mentor in Washington, The Washington Post reports.

The dynamic between Bryant and teammate Shaquille O'Neal became so bad that in 2003 -- one year before Bryant would hit unrestricted free agency -- Bryant strongly considered leaving and trying to prove he could win on his own. The Wizards, with Jordan on board as either a player or a key decision-maker in the front office, made sense as a natural fit:

More than a decade ago, Bryant wanted to get away from Los Angeles, and the team he wanted to join was the Wizards, where he would join forces with his mentor Michael Jordan.

Those plans evaporated when then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin parted ways with Jordan in 2003, a year before Bryant became a free agent, but as Wizards fans pine over the idea of Kevin Durant coming to Washington as a free agent, the near-miss that was Kobe-to-DC finally can be shared.

“That’s true,” Bryant confirmed recently. “A long time ago? Yeah.”

It's unclear whether Jordan would be playing alongside Bryant in this scenario, or if Jordan would have retired and moved into the front office to help assemble a championship-caliber roster around Bryant (though Jordan's track record as an executive is spotty at best). Perhaps both, as The Washington Post suggests:

According to two people with knowledge of the situation, after Jordan decided to sell his minority ownership stake to resume his playing career with the Wizards, Bryant informed him several times he wanted to play for the Wizards — under the assumption that Jordan would return to the front office once his playing days were over.

If you thought LeBron James and Dwyane Wade were an awkward fit at first, imagine two shoot-first alpha dogs like Bryant and Jordan playing together.

Who would've been the primary ball-handler? Who takes the backseat as a facilitator? Who takes the last shot? All of these questions, and many, many more, would have been fascinating to watch play out. Obviously Bryant was entering his prime, and Jordan was on his last legs, but it's difficult to imagine Jordan ceding control to his primary threat to the Greatest Of All-Time (G.O.A.T.) throne.

It's also interesting to think of the short- and long-term ripple effects of this move.

Do the Wizards win multiple -- if any -- championships with Bryant? How is he remebered? Does O'Neal stay in Los Angeles then? Could the team have traded O'Neal, started rebuilding, and drafted a franchise cornerstone -- Chris Paul? Dwight Howard? -- in the one of the mid-2000s drafts? Would "The Decision" have even mattered? Would superstars have started teaming up earlier?

Perhaps the weirdest thought of all is imagining Bryant in another jersey other than the purple and gold. It just doesn't seem right.

Of course, we know how things turned out: Jordan and the Wizards parted ways later in 2003, O'Neal was traded to the Miami Heat in the summer of 2004, and Bryant signed a seven-year, $136.4 million extension with the Lakers, before going on to win two more championships. The Wizards didn't have the assets or cap space to trade for Bryant, and he was likely never going to leave tens of millions on the table to join a lesser supporting cast.

Still, this is one of the more interesting NBA "what-ifs" in recent memory.

H/t The Washington Post.