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Kobe and CP3 imagine Lakers titles if not for 'basketball reasons'
The vetoed trade that would have sent Chris Paul to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2011 changed the course of several franchises, the players involved, and even future draft picks like Anthony Davis. David Stern's decision to veto the deal for "basketball reasons" remade the Los Angeles Clippers into a legitimately strong franchise, sent the Lakers towards Dwight Howard, and forced the Houston Rockets into waiting for the trade that eventually brought in James Harden. It is underrated in its importance, if anything, and certainly one of the more curious events in recent NBA history.
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The two biggest stars impacted by the deal, Paul and Kobe Bryant, still think about what might have been if not for Stern's veto. They discussed the issue ahead of their final two games against each other, a "home" back-to-back at Staples Center on Tuesday and Wednesday. From Baxter Holmes for ESPN.com:
"You know me. My dream isn't to win games," Bryant recalled to ESPN this week. "It's like, 'How many of these titles are we going to win [together]?' Because if we don't win, we're a failure."
"It was crazy," Paul told ESPN this week. "It was exciting. We talked about potentially being teammates and all that stuff like that. Then, in the blink of an eye, gone." [...]
"When we played together in every All-Star Game, we never f----- around," Bryant said. "It was like, 'Listen, the guys have their fun, but now let's do what we do.' I knew how competitive he was, and I knew it would be a perfect fit. We just kind of talked about what we're going to do, how we're going to scheme to get things done. Unfortunately, it never happened." [...]
"Butting heads is fine," Bryant said. "If we didn't butt heads, we wouldn't have won championships. There's different variations of healthy butting heads and not healthy. [Shaquille O'Neal] and I would butt heads in a very unhealthy way, but then we figured out how to make it happen.
"But I think Chris and I are really two completely different players, and where Shaq and I really butted heads was in the work ethic, because his size and injuries prohibited him from working as hard as he could have been working. So what I used to get on him about was that. That's what we really disagreed on -- the amount of focus and physical attention that it takes to win this damn thing. And so Chris and I would never have these issues." [...]
"Things would've been very, very, very different around here," Bryant said, "with two of the most competitive people the league has ever seen."
It seems fairly apparent that Kobe is making a slightly veiled dig at Dwight Howard, who joined the Lakers via trade the next offseason and meshed with the franchise icon about as poorly as a player possibly could. Howard has had many successes during his career and played through more injuries than his reputation suggests, but no one has ever confused him for a super-focused and intense individual. He and Kobe did not get along because of their differences — unfortunately, unlike during his time with Shaq, Bryant could not look at the team's record as making it all worthwhile.
Kobe has good reason to think things would have gone a whole lot better with CP3 as his co-star, but he's perhaps looking at their partnership that never was with the optimism of someone who has experienced the disappointment of reality. (That's without considering that the Lakers would have had to rely on Andrew Bynum, one of the bigger flakes the NBA has seen recently, as their lone interior force.) Kobe and CP3 can speak fondly of their interactions as Team USA and All-Star teammates, but it's very different to play with someone for six months or more without interruption. Both players are known as stubborn, demanding leaders who like to be in control. What would have happened the first time one failed to share the ball with the other in crunch time? Would they have been able to resolve their differences?
It's impossible to predict exactly how things would have gone, and Kobe and the Lakers probably don't have great feelings about Stern's final seasons as commissioner for this reason alone. But there's not a ton of evidence to suggest that Kobe and CP3 would have been an unbeatable combination even if they would have been a strong contender. Strong personalities don't always get along well. Neither player has had to experience an equally demanding co-star before, and there's no telling how they would have gotten along over several seasons wearing the purple and gold.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at efreeman_ysports@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
