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Kobe Bryant confirms that he wanted to join Michael Jordan and the Wizards
When Michael Jordan’s two-year contract to play basketball for the Washington Wizards expired at the end of the 2002-03 season, it was assumed by many that Jordan would be asked to return to his role as the Wizards’ president of basketball operations and de facto general manager – a position he held for a season and a half prior to returning to the court. Instead, then-Wizards owner Abe Pollin informed Jordan that he would not be returning to that post with the franchise. Feeling used, Jordan literally sped away from the Wizards in his Corvette, never to return to the league as an active player.
To hear Kobe Bryant tell it, Pollin and the Wizards lost out on their best chance to make Bryant Jordan’s heir to the mediocre Wizards’ throne. Kobe would have signed with the Wizards to work under Jordan in a mentoring program of sorts had MJ stayed around as GM. Bryant, a free agent in 2004, confirmed as much in an interview with the Washington Post’s Michael Lee that was published on Monday:
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.
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“That’s true,” Bryant confirmed recently. “A long time ago? Yeah.”
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“I’ve always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I’ve been really, really big on that,” Bryant said. “Being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried to pick their brains and always tried to absorb knowledge. Obviously, being in that situation [with the Wizards], it would’ve helped having to be around him every day and so on.”
Bryant, you’ll recall, went on to re-sign with the Lakers in the summer of 2004 after they dealt Shaquille O’Neal to Miami. Only, of course, after Kobe left the Lakers teetering (without Shaq or Kobe on the payroll) as he met with several other free agent suitors. The Wizards, with Jordan out of the picture, were not one of those suitors.
The Wizards did have space that year, smartly doling out money for Gilbert Arenas (who literally flipped a coin to choose between the Clippers and Washington) after league rules meant the Wiz could outpace Golden State for his services, and dealing the draft pick that would turn into Devin Harris for Antawn Jamison – a win/win for both Washington and Dallas. Those moves help set up a solid run of ball for Washington, who made the playoffs for four straight seasons following that summer after making the postseason just once in the previous 15 years.
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Would Kobe have truly gone to a just-about barren (save for Jamison, presuming MJ would have made that trade, and Larry Hughes) just to work for the same franchise Jordan ran? It’s true that Kobe wanted nothing to do with playing with Shaq by 2004 (or some years prior, perhaps), but O’Neal was already in Miami when Bryant made his choice to return to Los Angeles. Would Kobe have taken less money just because Jordan was running things?
“We would’ve put together a great team and we would’ve won championships,” Bryant said. “Listen, man. There are not a lot of players in this league that say, ‘Come hell or high water, we’re going to get this [expletive] done.’ People can look around and joke around about winning, saying they want to win. For me, it’s a matter of life or death. It was that important to me. And if it’s that important to me, I’m going to get there.”
That’s the typically-styled Kobe Bryant-brand of tough talk, but his Lakers didn’t even make the playoffs in his first year without Shaq in 2005. And even with Phil Jackson returning that summer, the team was out in the first round of the playoffs in 2006 and 2007. Talk up getting “there” all you want, but re-written history, hypothetical scenarios and bluster don’t get you into the second round.
The Wizards did make the second round in 2004-05 with Arenas (working in Kobe’s ostensible space) leading the way, but only because the Chicago Bulls (their first round opponent) lost Luol Deng and Eddy Curry (don’t laugh, that was his best season) to the inactive list just before the playoffs started. The three years following saw the Wizards dumped in the first round in the East. Kobe, in his prime, would have made things easier, but that’s still a long way away from “championships.” Arenas was a pretty fair B-version of Kobe back then and yet he still couldn’t put Washington over the top, and you still had the nagging issue of Jordan’s up and down (mostly down) tenure as a general manager.
(It’s also important to note that Jordan was well-ensconced in a similar role in running the Charlotte Bobcats by 2007, when Kobe Bryant angrily demanded a trade away from the Lakers. You didn’t hear any peeps about Kobe wanted to be sent to North Carolina to play under his hoped-for mentor and muse.)
As Lee noted in his feature, Jordan’s first 13 months as Wizards boss were solid enough. Stuck with a miserable rebuilding project on a team featuring several well-heeled but either underperforming or aging players, he did well to clear cap space and prepare for a slow and intelligent move back up the standings. The gift of the top overall pick in the 2001 would seem to be the centerpiece in the turnaround, and Jordan used that selection on Kwame Brown – a move all but the most hopeless of Shane Battier (it was a weird time) supporters applauded. It was a bum move in retrospect, but Kwame was at the top of everyone’s boards that summer.
Brown disappointed us all, though, and by that summer Jordan was more concerned about pickup games and a comeback attempt than taking a sensible long-term approach with his team. Michael announced his return as a player in early fall, and he (not technically, as he wasn’t the official GM of the team) began making win-now personnel moves in order to capitalize on his last two active seasons. Jordan actually turned in a rather stellar, almost Kobe-like first half of the 2001-02 campaign, but nagging knee injuries made his final year and a half a bit of a waste.
Former Wizards owner Abe Pollin informed Jordan that his services with the franchise would not be needed following 2002-03, after Jordan had filled up his stadium for two years. Michael, understandably incensed, would not return to the NBA until former Charlotte owner Robert Johnson hired MJ to run the then-Bobcats in 2006.
Could Kobe and Michael have made it work?
Tough to say. When left to his own devices, without the sort of checks and balances that are currently in place in Charlotte, Jordan has been routinely awful as a general manager. Kobe can talk tough in retrospect, but he would have had to play for far less than the 7-year, $136 million deal he signed for with Los Angeles in 2004, just to play on a team Jordan was associated with. Kobe in his prime in a lacking Eastern Conference, years before LeBron James got any help, would have been something to watch; but nothing is guaranteed. Especially with Jordan – who selected Kwame Brown, Jared Jeffries, and Adam Morrison in consecutive drafts – running the show.
It’s a wild concept, though. Only Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan can talk this big.
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is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
