At the time, Jackson and his coaches didn't realize just how deep a divide they faced. After the season, Winter would confide that he was shocked by the level of hatred O'Neal expressed for Bryant when the coaches first arrived on the scene. "There was alot of hatred in his heart," Winter said, adding that O'Neal didn't hesitate to vent his feelings in team meetings. "He was saying really hateful things," Winter explained. "Kobe just took it and kept going."
O'Neal's main message to anyone who would listen, including management, was that the team could not win a championship with Bryant. West had been strong in pushing aside O'Neal's desire to remove Bryant from the team, but there were signs that management had heard the message so often that they, too, entertained doubts. During the offseason, former O'Neal teammate Penny Hardaway had contacted O'Neal about joining the Lakers. The center jumped at the opportunity and phoned management. The implied message was that Bryant should be traded, but management declined that move.
During the season, as the coaches worked to heal the rift between the players, Winter explained that it had been clear that if the coaches' efforts didn't work that "a move would have to be made if they can't play together." The team wasn't about to trade the massive O'Neal, which meant that Bryant would have to go. Like West, though, the coaching staff saw Bryant as a Jordan-like player. His hands were smaller than Jordan's, but the athletic ability, the intelligence, the desire, were prodigious. What wasn't clear was whether Bryant would grow to possess the alpha male nature that made Jordan so dominant in his late twenties. Bryant was still so young, it was hard to evaluate him for that. He certainly possessed the work ethic and drive.
But Jackson put off the temptation to form a close relationship with Bryant. The coach correctly read that O'Neal's nature craved such a relationship, and Jackson turned just about all of his undivided attention to his relationship with O'Neal. The coach would later explain that the center did not have the same inquisitiveness as Jordan, and the conversations he had with O'Neal were not as expansive. Still, they spent much time talking.
[...]
The danger, said Winter, was that O'Neal seemed to influence the entire team against Bryant. So he and Jackson worked regularly on changing that attitude. "The coaches voiced to us that they weren't seeing the same things we were seeing when they watched film and when they watched what was going on," Derek Fisher explained. "They didn't see the same selfishness or one-on-one play that we saw. What I tried to tell some of the other guys is that this is our fourth year now- me, Shaq, Robert, Rick, Travis- so we still had issues that we had dealt with before this year."
And those issues were still cooking on the team agenda, Fisher said. "It was kind of similar to a relationship between a man and a woman where you get upset with all of these things from the past that come up. That's really where alot of this stuff stemmed from. The coaches saw that alot of this stuff would come in due time. But we were so impatient because we felt we had dealt with it before." For a time, it seemed that no matter what Bryant did, O'Neal and other teammates wanted to find fault with it. Winter revealed that he finally put together a videotape to prove to O'Neal that Bryant was doing just what he was supposed to do. "I think Kobe is bending over backwards to get the ball in to Shaq," Winter would confide as the season progressed. "If there's a problem there- and I think we'll work it out- it's that I don't think Shaq appreciates what Kobe is trying to do to help his game."
[...]
Perhaps the most telling factor in Kobe Bryant's first few weeks in pro basketball was the nickname affixed to him by Shaquille O'Neal, his seven-foot-one, 330 pound teammate. O'Neal had watched Bryant dunk in his early practices and had seen him basking in the media glow as reporters gravitated to him in the Lakers' locker room. So the big center had decided to call him "Showboat." Bryant sensed that it was not entirely a term of affection.......
O'Neal was a huge fun-loving man yet surpisingly sensitive to any criticism. After Del Harris was fired, the coach would tell associates that the center was perhaps too fun-loving, too much of a comedian , to be an effective team leader. He had a great sense of humor and loved to amuse himself and others with it. In his first season in Los Angeles, O'Neal used that humor to nudge Kobe toward being more of a team player. the center even composed a ditty, set to the tune of Greatest Love of All," aimed at Bryant. In the locker room, Shaq would croon: "I believe that Showboat is the future/Call the play and let that motherf*****r shoot......" He'd sing a verse, then come back with the next a little louder: "I BELIEVE THAT SHOWBOAT IS THE FUTURE......" Kobe wouldn't exactly fall in stitches at the derisive performance, but he wasn't thin-skinned about it either. they were simply different in their approach to life......."
Kobe saw how hard Fisher was working on his shooting and his conditioning. The one standard by which Bryant measured other players was how hard they worked. He had little regard for the people, no matter how talented, who refused to make the effort to get better.
[...]
Kobe's Lakers teammates didn't approach the game the same way. The only one capable of battling Kobe and not getting upset was Eddie Jones, which meant that he and Kobe would have furious battles in practice yet never feel the need to carry it beyond that. "I'm gonna bust your a**," Kobe would tell Jones during their battles, which only drove the intensity higher. Other Lakers, however, harbored an intense dislike for Kobe because of the way he attacked practices.
Ideally, every Laker should have had Kobe's attitude toward competing and being physical in practice, Fisher said. "That really was the way we all should have been competing. With Kobe's spirit." It didn't work out that way, though. And the Lakers troubles in 1999 would begin with that January pickup session. More than five weeks later word would leak into the L.A. newspapers that Shaq had slapped Kobe during practice. the reports didn't detail when the incident happened or what was involved, butit would be cited as a sign of their growing dislike for each other. Fisher remember being amazed at tthose newspaper reports, because they came so long after the incident and because there had only been four people in the gyn at the time. Who had leaked news of the incident, he wondered.
"It had just been physical," Fisher recalled. "Both guys had gotten tired. Neither guy started it. It started from them both being physical." And the altercation itself didn't last long, but the repercussions did. "Some true feelings came out," Fisher said. "They didn't really sat all that much, but it was done in an extremely negative way. You could tell the guys had negative thoughts for each other." Worse yet, it was clear those feelings weren't going away any time soon, Fisher said. "It would always be remembered." One member of the Lakers staff said the situation happened because O'Neal wanted to make a point. "It sent a message but Kobe didn't receive it," the staffer said.........
[...]
"The thing that hurts us about this season," Fox said, "is that both of you acted like you're apart from us, and that we're not any good. We have won championships for each other, sacrificing and all of a sudden, you turn your backs on us." Shaq, clearly affected, began to respond when Kobe cut him off "Quit your crying," Kobe said. I then jumped in. "Kobe, you're as much to blame as Shaq is, if not more." "You're the one who should fucking talk," he said. "You said I sabotaged games"
[...]
"I can't understand that Shaq lays around all season," Kerr says, "and wants to turn it on in the playoffs." I've told Kerr there's absolutely nothing wrong with that mindset. Shaq is a unique individual, and that uniqueness must be tolerated for him to flourish.
