2014 NBA Off-Season; Paul George suffers a double-compund-fracture, likely out for season. Speedy re

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Kenny Smith: "On offense, is there anyone who can stop you on the basketball court?"

Baron Davis : "No."

Kenny Smith: "On defense, is there anyone who you can't stop on the basketball court?"

Baron Davis: "No."

Kenny Smith: "Then why aren't you one of the ten best players in the league?!?!"
 
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Julius Wrek
 
Mr Marcus said:
ill steelo said:
Kobe Bryant: “ Cleveland is making the same mistake that Charlotte made with me ”.
— 2014MrBasket (@2014MrBasket) August 14, 2014
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His *** forced that trade...*****

Pulled an Eli before Eli
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Lakers' trade for Bryant has been misconstrued
Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008 1:00 am | Updated: 7:40 pm, Wed Dec 12, 2012.

By John Delong

Revisionist history is always fascinating.

It's not always accurate, but it's fascinating.

The Charlotte Hornets drafted Kobe Bryant with the 13th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft and promptly traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers for Vlade Divac.

Over the years, that story has been told, retold and embellished so much that the reality of that trade and the current perception are farther apart than, oh, Charlotte and Los Angeles. It's a timely topic because throughout this year's NBA Finals between the Lakers and Boston Celtics, we've heard all the revisionist history again.

We've heard how Kobe and his agent shunned the Hornets, threatened that Kobe wouldn't play for the Hornets, and therefore orchestrated the trade to the Lakers. There has been more talk in Charlotte about Kobe and the Hornets the past two weeks than there has been about anything concerning the Bobcats.

A look back into the archives shows that the notion that Kobe orchestrated the trade is bogus. Kobe, in an interview during the 2000 Finals when the Lakers beat Indiana for the NBA title, said emphatically that he would have gladly played in Charlotte. Sure, he wanted to play for the Lakers, but who wouldn't? He also said that had he gone to college, he would have signed with Duke, so he liked the area.

And those who were involved in the wheeling and dealing at the time of the trade shoot down all the legends that have developed over the years.

"The deal was actually done a day ahead of time, and it was Vlade for a player to be named," said Bill Branch, the Hornets' head scout at the time who still operates out of Charlotte as a scout for the Seattle-now-Oklahoma City Sonics. "If I remember right, they didn't even tell us who they wanted us to pick until about five minutes before the pick was made. So it was never a matter of us actually drafting Kobe."

The trade was more about the Lakers' pursuit of Shaquille O'Neal in free agency and the Hornets' need to acquire a center than it was about Bryant.

In order to get far enough under the salary cap to make a valid pitch to O'Neal, the Lakers needed to unload Divac's contract, preferably to a team under the salary cap and preferably for a draft pick. The Hornets had traded Alonzo Mourning the previous year, were without a bona fide center, and were well under the cap after renouncing the rights to free agent Kenny Anderson. They would trade Larry Johnson to New York for Anthony Mason later that summer.

The Hornets reasoned that they could come out of the draft with no better than Vitaly Potapenko or Todd Fuller if they drafted a center, and jumped at the chance to trade the 13th pick for Divac.

"When you look back at it, when we made that trade, here was a 17-year-old kid who had played in high school," said Bob Bass, the Hornets' executive vice president of basketball operations at the time.

"Twelve other teams passed on him. We made a decision to win now and not later. We had Dave Cowens as our first-year coach, and I wanted to give him a chance to win. I knew if we got Divac in here, we'd win. I didn't feel the same about Bryant. Without Divac, I thought we might have won 25 games."

The Hornets won 54 games, then a franchise record, the next season with Divac.

The Lakers might have been high on Bryant, but this was more about clearing up the cap room to make a run at O'Neal, whose contract was up in Orlando. Marc Fleisher, Divac's agent, remembers that the

Lakers had a trade worked out to send Divac to Atlanta for the 25th pick if anything fell through with the Hornets. Had that scenario played out, there's little or no way that Bryant would have fallen all the way to the 25th pick, so Bryant and the Lakers couldn't have orchestrated anything.

"There were three teams involved at first -- Charlotte, Atlanta and Sacramento," Fleisher said. "Sacramento didn't work out for whatever reason, and then it was basically Charlotte or Atlanta. They asked us where Vlade would rather go, and he said Charlotte."

Divac later threatened to retire shortly after the deal was announced, and that would have nixed the trade. But Cowens talked him out of that threat, and the trade became official. After a few more minor deals and cap moves, the Lakers had enough cap room to sign O'Neal -- with Bryant, 17, as icing on the summer-acquisition cake.

Branch scouted Bryant twice for the Hornets while Bryant was at Lower Merion H.S., but he said that the Hornets "never even considered him" as a player they would draft and keep. Bass was an old-school GM who liked to deal but didn't usually gamble on young players.

Branch recalls how difficult it was to gauge Bryant's talents against inferior high-school competition. This was an era before it became fashionable to draft high-school players, before Kwame Brown, Dwight Howard and LeBron James were No. 1 picks straight out of high school.

Branch believes that the Lakers' Jerry West was probably gambling on Bryant to a degree, because that was West's style. And if Bryant didn't pan out, the Lakers would still get O'Neal in the process.

"Jerry West might be the only person who can really answer that, but I just think it (Bryant's stardom) would be very hard to predict, because you've got stories of guys who turned out good and stories of guys who turned out bad," Branch said. "The year before, L.A. wasn't even in the draft and they made a move to get into the second round at the last second, and they picked Frankie King out of Western Carolina. They specifically made a move to get one kid. So when you see moves like that and then they go for Kobe, you've got to think they're taking stabs.

"And I don't mean that negatively. I just mean for someone to say now that they knew Michael Jordan was going to be what he was, they're kidding themselves. We all thought Kobe was going to be good.

But how do you really know?"

You don't. And that's why the Hornets were never anything but facilitators for the Lakers.

Twelve years later, obviously, it has worked out well for the Lakers. But the Hornets didn't get coerced into anything.
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Nelson999 said:
If its Under Armour then why are they letting Curry play?
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its a new contract..

hes not with Nike at the moment and right around the time the USA camp started he was in talks with Nike and UA. So if UA signed him to a huge megadeal they could have told him to if he wants the deal to not participate.

I dont think they wanna ink dude to $325 million and have him somehow get injured and for them its a terrible invest when the face of your brand you just spent all that money on is injured and possibly wont be the player he was anymore.

just saying, could be something else.
 
I don't give a **** what that article says or what Kobe said in 2000....he made it clear through his agent he did not want play for us


We still drafted him cause we knew we could get some players through a trade
 
The CHA owner, GM, coach and Jesus himself could come out and say it wasn't the case yet, the NT experts have their agendas on everything. There's no factual proof that said Kobe didn't want to play for CHA, just like he didn't want to play for NJ allegedly, Cal has said it directly from his mouth but that's not enough either I guess.
 
It's well known Kobe shunned New Jersey. He was never going to Charlotte because it was agreed beforehand that the Hornets were going to trade him to the Lakers for Vlade Divac.
 
Just like how this Wiggins and Love trade was agreed upon on lottery night.

Jabari said he didn't wanna play in Cleveland because in reality he didn't wanna play in Minnesota.
 
OlDirtyReseller said:
 
Maximus Meridius said:
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He really said that
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I'm sorry

He's just the third youngest to win a finals MVP, and the youngest player(who actually played decent minutes in a game) who on a team full of vets, who were all but washed.

Course any team that makes the playoffs, have cohesion. But which one of those teams are you picking over the '14 spurs. And please, elaborate
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All I said you said.....

Unless "all but washed" means something else, it's bs. You can keep back peddling like deion in '94 if you want though.....mj shrug
 
Jerry West pulled all those strings, not Kobe, or his agent.

West knew EXACTLY what he was doing. He traded Divac, Peeler, and Lynch, all to get max room for Shaq and bring in Kobe.

The draft, was actually done before Free Agency (as you all know) meaning that deal was set up well in advance.
 
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