During his 20-year NBA career, Kobe Bryant established a legacy as one of the greatest basketball players of all time thanks to five championships, one Most Valuable Player award and two Finals MVPs.
And he did it all with one team – the Los Angeles Lakers.
But in 2007, one of basketball’s most iconic one-team men came close to agreeing to a spectacular trade to play elsewhere.
At the time, Bryant was arguably the best player in the league but the Lakers were struggling.
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The era in which Bryant had combined with superstar powerhouse Shaquille O’Neal to win three straight NBA titles had ended with the 7ft 1in centre’s move to the Miami Heat a year earlier.
And a second period of success, which saw Bryant in tandem with silky Spanish big man Pau Gasol, was still a few years away in the future.
While Bryant produced elite scoring averages, he grew frustrated at his team’s inability to compete for championships. And so he put in a trade request.
The Dallas Mavericks, losing NBA finalists to Shaq’s Heat in 2006, were interested and offered a trade package of Josh Howard, Jason Terry and draft picks for the wantaway star.
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A deal looked as good as done, only for LA general manager Mitch Kupchak to intervene, convincing Bryant to stick with his beloved Lakers.
“I literally thought it was done,” Mark Cuban, the Mavericks’ owner between 2000 and 2023, said on O’Neal’s podcast, The Big Pod. “Then Mitch Kupchak obviously stepped up and said, ‘We can’t do this.’ Talked Kobe out of it. The rest is history.”
The proposed Dallas switch would have paired Bryant with German power forward and 2007 MVP Dirk Nowitzki, a superstar duo that could well have driven the Mavericks to a first title sooner than their eventual maiden triumph in 2011.
But instead, Bryant stayed put and in 2008 he was joined by Gasol, a former Rookie of the Year and All-Star who arrived in a trade from the Memphis Grizzlies.
And in 2009 and 2010, Bryant earned his fourth and fifth NBA titles, taking the Finals MVP award both times.