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According to an article published today by Marc Stein of the New York Times, former Los Angeles Lakers head coach Del Harris said the team's former general manager, Jerry West, tried to acquire the draft rights of Tracy McGrady in 1997 to pair him with the young duo of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal.
Bryant, who was selected 13th overall by the Charlotte Hornets in the 1996 NBA Draft, was immediately traded to the Lakers for center Vlade Divac. That same summer, the Lakers signed O'Neal to a massive seven-year, $120 million deal in high hopes of ending the team's title drought.
Harris explained West's state of mind and high hopes for McGrady at the time to Stein.
“I don’t think anybody can look at an 18-year-old and say he’s a Hall of Famer,” Harris said of McGrady. “You couldn’t even do that with Jordan. And Kobe was a young 18 in his first season. He was still in a pretty normal teenage body, compared to when LeBron James came in and had a man’s body.
“McGrady came in the next year with a more mature body and worked out so well that Jerry kind of tooled around with the idea that maybe we should just go ahead and make a deal for whatever it took to get this guy — even though it’d be a step back in the short term — to have two guys like this on the same team.”
However, it ended up being Lakers owner Jerry Buss who put his foot down against the idea of trading for McGrady's draft rights. The team did not want to give up an All-Star caliber player like Eddie Jones in order to acquire another 18-year-old player drafted straight out of high school like Bryant.
Hypothetically speaking, how on Earth would Lakers legendary head coach Phil Jackson, who replaced previous head coach Kurt Rambis, have coached the three young superstars in Bryant, O'Neal, and McGrady all on the same team?
