Sacramento Kings head coach Luke Walton has been intently watching ESPN's docuseries “The Last Dance,” which has sparked plenty of uncanny similarities between Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

Walton, who played with Bryant as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, noted how passages of each episode of the series reflect how similar the two players were in nature, going way beyond Jordan's patented fadeaway jumper. The similarities are almost eerie:

“It was wild, sitting there watching these episodes so far, because I feel like I am watching Kobe Bryant play in the ’80s and early ’90s with a different team,” Walton told Sam Amick and Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “(Sunday) night, you see that look in (Jordan’s) face and you hear him tell Horace Grant: ‘Don’t let them see you, don’t let them see you whine, don’t let them see that you’re in pain.’ I mean, playing with Kobe Bryant, those were (his) words.”

Tex Winter, who was Doug Collins' top assistant with the Chicago Bulls, taught Phil Jackson the triangle offense and went on to be Jackson’s assistant on his staff in Chicago and Los Angeles. His key characteristic would be to pry on Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant for their tendency to dominate the ball:

“I was dying laughing because Jordan during the episode at some point was talking about how Tex would always be on the bench yelling at Michael to move the ball, pass the ball,” said Walton. “It made me think when we were playing on the Lakers, Tex would do the same thing, but about Kobe. He would have, like, 49 points, he’d be dominating the game, but Tex would be so mad that he wasn’t moving the ball. He had a two-count to move the ball. The ball either had to be dribbled, passed or shot within a two-count, and if Kobe didn’t do it, Tex would be losing his mind behind the bench. So to hear Jordan going through the same thing, two of the greatest players of all time, was pretty good.”

Jackson kept the same skeleton from his Bulls days when he was hired by the Lakers. He found himself another fierce, Michael Jordan-like competitor in Kobe Bryant, which only made his coaching formula effective once again with the Lakers' three-peat from 2000-2002.