Kobe Bryant on Michael Jordan: “I Don’t Get Five Championships Without Him”
In the episode five opener of ESPN’s The Last Dance, Michael Jordan, sitting in the Eastern Conference locker room in the lead-up to the 1998 NBA All-Star Game, offers a rhetorical question about a teenaged Kobe Bryant. “That little Laker boy is going to try and take everyone one-on-one, huh?”
Up to that point, Jordan and Bryant had technically faced off on four separate occasions. The first two were a lopsided affair, since Bryant barely logged any minutes during his rookie season. But in season two, Kobe arrived: 33 points in a losing effort on December 17, 1997, and 20 points in a victory on February 1, 1998.
“He don’t let the game come to him,” Jordan says of Bryant in the same All-Star Game opening clip. “He just come out and take it.”
We knew this was coming: Jordan talking about Bryant, and Bryant talking about Jordan. The latter comes in a flash-forward interview, a recent one with Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash on January 26. Speaking of his basketball idol, Bryant tells the cameras, “He’s like my big brother … What you get from me, is from him. I don’t get five championships here without him. He guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.”
Bryant demurs on who would win in a game of one-on-one, by the way, and then we’re off-and-running. Episodes five and six of The Last Dance abandon the personality-heavy plots about Jordan's teammates and coaches, and instead advance through Jordan's biggest off-the-court successes and controversies. There's an extensive segment, for instance, on how Jordan’s collaboration with Nike came to fruition. (With appearances by Nas, Justin Timberlake, and other fans of his signature sneakers.)
Jordan's tenuous friendships and rivalries with other NBA players are addressed from his own perspective, especially his icy history with Isiah Thomas.
“I respect Isiah Thomas’s talent,” Jordan says today. “To me, the best point guard of all-time is Magic Johnson, and right behind him is Isiah Thomas.” Jordan reaffirms in The Last Dance that he didn’t tell Dream Team overseer Rod Thorn to keep Thomas off the 1992 Olympics squad, though his denial is notably understated compared to some of his other more boisterous pronouncements.
There's also plenty of time dedicated to MJ's propensity for gambling—which became a scandal in 1993 as the Bulls chased a third-straight title—and his reticence to talk politics. Now, he claims, his infamous “Republican buy sneakers too” line was made in jest, while hanging out with teammates.
“I never thought of myself as an activist,” he says. “I thought of myself as a basketball player.”
Chris Gayomali on growing up with a figure as complicated as Kobe and what he meant to Lakers fans.
Originally Appeared on GQ
