Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards shared his thoughts on the manner in which Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan behaved toward their teammates during their playing careers.
“I can agree to disagree, because in today’s game everybody’s different,” Edwards said when asked if he likes the way Bryant and Jordan went at their teammates. “You can’t talk to everybody the same. You got to talk to players differently. Certain players can take it. I talk to some of my teammates like, ‘Hey, get your s— together.’ But some players, you got to go talk to them on the side. You can’t really cuss them out in front of everybody.”
Edwards was specifically addressing how players like Bryant and Jordan would challenge their teammates to “come up to my level right now.”
Bryant had a lengthy history of controversial incidents with folks who played alongside him on the Los Angeles Lakers. While many of the incidents were seemingly meant to serve as motivation to make his teammates better, that wasn’t always the case.
For example, Bryant allegedly punched Samaki Walker in the 2001-02 campaign over a seemingly insignificant matter.
Walker owed Bryant $100 after the latter buried a half-court shot near the end of a morning shootaround. The owed money led to the incident. The Lakers had a ritual going at the time where the team lined up to take half-court shots, and the winner received $100 from each participant.
On the other hand, Lou Williams — who spent the 2015-16 season in Los Angeles, which marked Bryant’s swan song in the NBA — claimed that the legendary shooting guard arranged to confiscate his teammates’ Nike Kobe shoes. Bryant’s reasoning for having the shoes confiscated was allegedly because he thought his teammates were soft.
“I just remember him telling the young guys, ‘When I’m in the front office next year, I’m trading all you motherf——,’” Williams said. “We got back to L.A. that next day, and the equipment manager was just coming around with a big a– bucket, just scooping Kobes out of everybody locker. Me and Nick [Young] were like, ‘What you doin?’ And he said, ‘Kobe thinks y’all n—– soft, he don’t want y’all wearing his shoes.’”
In addition, at least one of Bryant’s former teammates has accused him of being self-centered at times. Kareem Rush — who was a guard with the Lakers when the team reached the 2004 NBA Finals — said the team lost to the Detroit Pistons partly because Bryant “selfishly wanted MVP.”
“I mean, they simply outplayed us,” Rush said. “Karl [Malone] was hurt in that series. And I think Kobe selfishly wanted MVP.
“I think that we were favored by everybody to win the series you know, and at the time Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) had the first three Finals MVPs. So I think Kobe had the mindset with that as the primary focus, but I think he was really itching to get that MVP — and we got caught off guard by a better team.
“The Pistons were — they went on to do seven straight in the [Eastern] Conference Finals so that team was a winning team for the ages and they had a starting five that was very formidable. Those were all All-Star caliber.
“They had a couple of Hall of Famers in Ben Wallace and Chauncey [Billups] – and maybe even Rip (Richard Hamilton). So they were definitely a formidable team and they were better than us at the time.”
While Edwards might not want to replicate Bryant in terms of how he treated his teammates, he likely wants to win at the level that the L.A. icon did. Bryant won five NBA titles during his tenure with the Lakers and also took home a pair of Finals MVP awards in 2009 and 2010.
Edwards has yet to win a title since he joined the NBA, but he came close to leading the Timberwolves to their first NBA Finals appearance in the 2024 NBA Playoffs. Minnesota reached the conference finals for the first time since 2004, but the team lost to the Dallas Mavericks in five games.
