Jeremy Lin spent just one year playing with Kobe Bryant, when he joined for the 2014-15 season after a stint with the Houston Rockets. And while it surely was an honor for him to play alongside Kobe, things didn’t go to plan as the Lakers finished 14th in the Western Conference with a 21-60.
Now, he has shed light on the ways Bryant famously challenged him during his stint at LA, claiming that he did have an issue with how Kobe handled things, per a post on Instagram by ClutchPoints.
“I am not disrespecting Kobe because I fully acknowledge that he is a thousand times the player that I am, but what I am saying is even being a leader, like what you and me were saying to him was not, we were smarter than you, we were better than you. It was more like in this specific situation, here’s a little bit of feedback that I felt that you could handle it differently. You are not perfect, right?” he said, before claiming that he still had a lot of respect for the late Lakers legend.
“And so it comes with so much respect for who he is. Did he have to respect me like with the magnitude and the level of player that he was? No, not necessarily. I understand why he would look at me and be like, yo like he’s just not getting it done for us. So again, I don’t hold it now to this day. I have let it go and me and him patched it up but that is a concept,” Lin concluded.
The 2019 NBA champion clearly does not hold any grudges and would himself not look back at his time with the Lakers as his best years in the NBA. Lin averaged 11.2 points and 4.6 assists per game across 74 appearances, which included 30 starts. Kobe was the only All-Star and the only player averaging more than 20 points on the roster, choosing to retire at the end of the following season at the age of 37.
