The tragic passing of Kobe Bryant is an inextricable part of the Los Angeles Lakers season. And in particular, for LeBron James, Bryant’s presence in Laker Lore before his death was something that meant a great deal to him. The day before Bryant’s death, LeBron passed him on the NBA’s All-Time scoring list. After the Lakers punched their ticket to the first NBA Finals since Bryant led the Lakers to back-to-back championships, Kobe was still on LeBron’s mind.
According to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, LeBron still has a regret about his relationship with Kobe, that neither made the time to meet up and get together as they had planned when James arrived in Los Angeles to play with the Lakers in 2018.
“When I played in Cleveland, I grew up 35 minutes away from there, and so I kind of knew the people. When I went down to Miami, [Dwyane Wade] was able to give me the blueprint on that. But I never played for a historic franchise like the Lakers,” James told Yahoo Sports. “It’s probably like when [Alex Rodriguez] went to the Yankees. He probably heard from [Derek] Jeter on what it’s going to take to play in front of this. It’s different from playing with the Mariners. It’s different from the Rangers. I would have definitely loved to get that side of what it takes, what does it take to win over Laker faithful or how can I make them appreciate my game. … That would have been something to pick his brain on.
“And then probably talk about us never meeting in the Finals. Just apologizing to him. In f—ing ’09 when I lost to Dwight [Howard], that would have been a great conversation for sure. You know, just to be like, we didn’t give the people what they wanted. We didn’t give them what they wanted.”
LeBron spoke before about how much not meeting Kobe in the 2009 Finals has bothered him before, but obviously, he wanted to tell Bryant personally that he wishes they could have had the matchup that everybody wanted. Including those two, most of all.
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