National Basketball Association

Kobe on Shaq: 'It used to drive me crazy that he was so lazy'

Published Mar. 25, 2014 6:40 p.m. ET

foxsports

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the Los Angeles Lakers knows Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal famously didn't get along during their time together in the early 2000s despite winning three championship titles.

And now, in a New Yorker profile on Bryant, the 35-year-old explained to writer Ben McGrath that it was his former teammate's flagging work ethic that drove the guard up a wall:

Kobe on Shaq in the @NewYorker: "It used to drive me crazy that he was so lazy."
— Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) March 24, 2014

Last month, former Lakers coach Phil Jackson pretty much echoed Bryant's thoughts about the 7-foot-1 center's lack of work ethic, and said that played into the animosity between the two stars.

"Shaq didn't work at it ... Shaq had a clown role he had to play," Jackson said at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. "So that was part of the rift."

H/t Bleacher Report.