“That little Laker boy’s gonna take everybody one-on-one,” Jordan said to Tim Hardaway in the locker room. The truth is, this had been happening from the moment Bryant entered the NBA in 1996. “As early as I can remember, whenever the Lakers played the Bulls, Kobe would wait outside the tunnel for Michael to leave,” said Tim Grover, a personal trainer who worked with Jordan in Chicago and later with Bryant in Los Angeles. “And Michael was always the last person to leave the locker room. He took forever. But Kobe would wait and wait for him.” And the rest of the Lakers players would be on the bus, waiting on Bryant — a rookie — who was waiting on Michael. “But Kobe was like, ‘The bus is going to have to wait. Because I don’t know when I’m going to get this opportunity.’”