It was 2003, and Kobe Bryant was seriously considering leaving L.A. His Lakers had just won three championships in a row, but Bryant was growing tired of feuding with Shaquille O'Neal and was looking to make a change. He wanted to go out on his own, he wanted to prove he could win without O'Neal and that he, and not O'Neal, was the person most responsible for all those titles.
Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan nearly joined forces on the Wizards
Bryant said he would have signed with the Wizards had M.J. been allowed to remain the team’s President of Basketball Operations following his retirement.
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Bryant, according to this story from Michael Lee of the Washington Post, even had a destination in mind. He had already made the calls. Kobe wanted to play for, and possibly with, Michael Jordan. He wanted to sign with the Washington Wizards.
Lee, citing “two people with knowledge of the situation,” writes that after Jordan decided to sell his minority ownership stake in the Wizards in 2001 so that he could return to the court, Bryant “informed him several times he wanted to play for the Wizards -- under the assumption that Jordan would return to the front office once his playing days were over.”
Here’s what Bryant said to Lee as they recalled these discussions:
“I’ve always been very big on having mentors, on having muses and I’ve been really, really big on that,” Bryant said. “Being around guys who have done it before and done it at a high level and always tried to pick their brains and always tried to absorb knowledge. Obviously, being in that situation [with the Wizards], it would’ve helped having to be around him every day and so on.”
The Wizards didn’t have the assets to pull off a trade for Bryant, so the plan was to wait for him to become a free agent following the 2003-04 season. At that point they would deploy Jordan -- who Lee reports was “confident” he would sign Bryant -- as a recruiter. Everything was set.
But the Wizards never got to that point. In 2003, after Jordan retired for the last time and a year before Bryant became a free agent, then-Wizards owner Abe Polin decided not to hand Jordan back his title of President of Basketball Operations. Jordan was out in D.C., and with him went the plan to sign Bryant.
A year later O'Neal was traded to the Heat and Bryant signed a seven-year contract with the Lakers.
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