Throughout Kobe Bryant‘s legendary 20-year NBA career, there have been many peaks and valleys along the way.
While compiling the third-most points in league history and five championships, Bryant's brash personality rubbed some of his teammates the wrong way, including two great centers.
Shaquille O'Neal‘s feud with Kobe is well-documented, but the two are at peace with their past now as they look back fondly on the immense success they had together.
The same can't exactly be said of Dwight Howard. Howard's clearly not nearly the center O'Neal was, and his time with the Lakers only lasted one season (a disappointing one at that) before he bolted to Houston.
His relationship with Bryant was strenuous, to say the least. Their respective outlooks on the game could not have clashed any more.
Surprisingly, with their season together far away in the rear view mirror, Bryant actually looks back on 2012-13 with joy.
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Bryant, from an interview with ESPN's Baxter Holmes:
A month prior, for the first time in his career, Kobe Bryant made a guarantee: The Lakers would make the playoffs. “I felt like the die had to be cast, even for my teammates,” Bryant says today. “It had to be understood — we're doing this thing. It's not a wishy-washy thing. It's, ‘No, we're doing it.' Sometimes, when you're putting it out in the public like that, those things have a tendency to manifest themselves.” Bryant says he felt the weight of that guarantee as the Lakers entered this most crucial stretch, which started in Sacramento. “Yeah, but I loved it. I f—ing loved it,” Bryant says. “It pushed me to a level that I had never been to before — ever — in my career.”
Bryant essentially willed the Lakers to the postseason, regularly logging over 40 minutes a game, even going the full 48 against the Blazers. Over his last 10 games, he averaged 29.9 points per game.
By the end, the toll left Kobe with a torn Achilles just prior to the end of the regular season. Not that it stopped him; Bryant hobbled to the free throw line right after suffering the injury and hit both shots to even the score late, helping Los Angeles clinch a playoff berth.
So, maybe it wasn't so much playing with Dwight himself that Bryant loved, as much as the challenge of putting that team on his back and guiding them to the playoffs. Either way, it's interesting to see how excited Kobe gets looking back at that season.
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