Kobe Bryant had a very clear interest in media after his playing career was over with the Lakers.
He’d done work with ESPN on his “Detail” video series where he’d break down play from the current generation of NBA stars. He also won an Oscar for his short film “Dear Basketball” that was released back in 2018.
Apparently, he had another media venture that he considered once before eventually passing on it. And that was being a member of the NBA on TNT Thursday night crew.
We could’ve apparently had some mixture of Charles Barkley, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith and Ernie Johnson. That’s according to Barkley, anyway.
The NBA on TNT host visited Draymond Green’s podcast and explained how Bryant had actually signed a contract to come on the show but “didn’t want to do all the other [expletive].”
Take a listen.
“Kobe Bryant signed a contract to join the NBA on TNT crew after his retirement.” – Charles Barkley pic.twitter.com/EOsBwQMP8f
— 𝙎𝙝𝙪𝙗𝙝 ⁶𓅓 (@OVOLakeShow) March 2, 2022
“He had signed with us. David Levy, my old boss, had signed him to a deal. And we were excited. We were really excited. And then he called me back a week, 10 days later…like, ‘Yeah, Kobe’s not going to come.’ I’m like, ‘why?’ Because he don’t want to do all the PR stuff. He don’t want to go on radio shows and talk about basketball. Like, well, that’s part of the gig…He didn’t want to do all that and he never came to work for us.”
That’s fascinating. It doesn’t sound like a deal was ever truly done if Bryant didn’t actually have to come on the show. But even if they were just close to making this happen, it sounds pretty incredible.
Just imagine adding Bryant to the rest of that crew. No, wait. Scratch that. Imagine just reuniting Bryant with Shaq as part of that crew. That would’ve been amazing television. Could you imagine the debates they would’ve had at that table? Man. We needed this, y’all. Absolutely needed it.
NBA fans spent their time online just imagining how incredible this would’ve been.