Kobe Bryant Believes The 2011 Lockout Was Aimed At The Lakers
Kobe Bryant is doing some good old-fashioned venting lately.
He spoke with Ahmad Rashad last night in his NBA TV interview, and he’s opening up more in a new interview with GQ’s Chuck Klosterman.
Kobe talks plenty more about Phil, Shaq, having no “real” friends, shooting too much, players wanting to play with him and more, and then he also sprinkled this in about the NBA lockout in 2011:
“That lockout was made to restrict the Lakers,” Bryant said. “It was. I don’t care what any other owner says. It was designed to restrict the Lakers and our marketability.”
There is only one team like the Lakers. Everything that was done with that lockout was to restrict the Lakers’ ability to get players and to create a sense of parity, for the San Antonios of the world and the Sacramentos of the world.
But a funny thing happened, coming out of that lockout: Even with those restrictions, the Lakers pulled off a trade [for Chris Paul] that immediately set us up for a championship, a run of championships later, and which saved money. Now, the NBA vetoed that trade. But the Lakers pulled that shit off, and no one would have thought it was even possible. The trade got vetoed, because they’d just staged the whole lockout to restrict the Lakers. Mitch got penalized for being smart. But if we could do that…
A perspective that the masses of Laker Nation has surely embraced since the Chris Paul veto.
Unless you’re a Laker fan, you wouldn’t possibly entertain the notion that the lockout was designed specifically to hinder the Lakers’ success. There were plenty of financial variables in play. I’m sure Kobe has these strong feelings based on how he witnessed the aftermath of how it impacted his team, specifically the Chris Paul veto.
Check out the rest of Kobe’s GQ feature from the link above.
