When Kobe Bryant was at the podium after winning the 2010 NBA Finals, he was asked about the then-rumor of LeBron James and Dwyane Wade joining forces that offseason. This was a whole new world of inconvenience Kobe wanted no part of, especially after it was such a laborious path back to title contention that was more difficult for him off the court than on it.

We uniquely have detailed knowledge of who Kobe tried to exert his pseudo GM influence for and against during multiple stages of his playing career. The players he was linked to is more voluminous than any player outside of LeBron, who unlike Kobe, has selected his franchise and teammates two separate times so far and is perpetually recruiter-in-chief. The difference between Kobe and LeBron is the former never was given the sovereignty the latter received since returning to Cleveland in 2014.

Still just 26 years old in 2004, Kobe could have taken a version of LeBron’s absolute power by proxy, but that would have meant trusting in Donald Sterling and the Clippers instead of Dr. Jerry Buss and the Lakers. LeBron chose his teammates wisely the first time with the Heat and he’s already regretting the Kevin Love trade in a rather open manner pining for a Super Friends Part 2 that’s would even be more super this time around. 

For Kobe to leave the Lakers, it was either trading Buss for Sterling, or teaming up with Michael Jordan and the Wizards, Isiah Thomas, Stephon Marbury and the Knicks, or a sign-and-trade to the Bulls. None of these were particularly attractive options, whereas Jason Kidd had the chance to join Tim Duncan and the Spurs just one year earlier and chose to remain with the Nets. The Spurs' choice in 2004, had it been available to Kobe, is always the one I wonder about. In 2007, Kobe had the Spurs on his trade list, but the Spurs weren't quite the Spurs yet in 2004.

Kobe signed a six-year, $70 million extension with the Lakers in 1999 that included his opt-out clause for 2004 to become a free agent. The thought of Kobe and Shaq breaking up before even winning a title feels like something that was never realistically considered, but Kobe talked late in his career about how he sacrificed the early stage of his individual career to pursue a title with Shaq. Even during those struggles pre-2000 in the playoffs, there was an inevitability to the Lakers ultimately winning one.

The inability of Kobe and Shaquille O’Neal to co-exist, even as strictly business partners with mutually beneficial goals, was a bigger gamble on both their parts in retrospect than it even felt at the time. They had won three titles together and reached a fourth Finals after the acquisitions of the Gary Payton and Karl Malone as their supporting cast. There would need to be a shuffling of role players, but continuing with each other was their safest option, no matter how intolerable, no matter what Shaq thought of Kobe telling the police about hush money and no matter what Kobe thought of Shaq’s commitment to the game. 

Kobe ultimately wanted to win on his own and he risked it all in gambling on himself in that way. Right or wrongly, Kobe was convinced he had outgrown Shaq and was tired of his immaturity, tired of scheduling surgeries on company time and tired of him playing his way into shape during the regular season. Even as a teenager Kobe knew he wanted Shaq out of his way metaphorically as well as literally on the court clogging the lane.

It wasn't a pragmatic move and when the Lakers were showing no urgency to contend for a title again after missing the playoffs in 2005 with Rudy Tomjanovich and Frank Hamblen, and then losing to the Suns in the first round in both 2006 and 2007 with Phil Jackson back, Kobe thought he'd have to leave the Lakers to do so. Kobe was tired of being given the likes of Kwame Brown and Smush Parker to work with and he was bored pushing that type of food around on his plate. Kobe immediately pushed for Dwyane Wade as the piece that would return to the Lakers from the Heat for Shaq in 2004, but instead it was Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Brian Grant and the pick that became Jordan Farmar. In 2007, only Odom and Farmar remained as Butler had been traded for Kwame, and Grant had been waived after just one season.

As soon as the Lakers’ 2007 offseason began, Kobe massacred the status quo and assured he would get himself traded, or he would get an upgrade of talent supporting him. Isolated from title pursuits, the 81-point games and 35.4 scoring average began to feel hollow and counterproductive to his legacy. Kobe could get sidetracked entirely with individual numbers while playing his body out of his prime without a legitimate shot at another title in a miserable and irrelevant purgatory if he didn’t take action. 

Allen Iverson forced his way out of the Philadelphia 76ers’ rebuild that previous December. Two years prior to that Iverson trade to the Nuggets, both Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter solicited trades as well and their franchises fairly quickly obliged and received far less in return than their actual value as legitimate superstars. The Magic could have paired McGrady with an early version of Dwight Howard and the Raptors could have allowed Chris Bosh to develop into a second All-Star beside Carter by merely refusing to yield.   

Kobe challenged the front office and both he and the Lakers had a certain degree of leverage that offseason. Kobe had a no-trade clause and an early termination option coming in 2009, but that was still two full seasons away. The Lakers would be able to see how much better Andrew Bynum could become and if there was a trade available to them, while still having a trade window in February of 2008 and in the offseason of 2008 before he began his walk year.

"Do something and do it now," Kobe said as he felt the undercurrents of his basketball mortality. "I don't know what to do, but it is extremely frustrating. We are going on three years of still being on ground zero."

Kobe aggressively continued the rhetoric a few days later, completely provoking the Lakers to do something. Kobe was issuing a very loud and public referendum against the Lakers for complacently wasting the prime of his career with a mediocre roster around him.

"I've been a Laker fan my whole life, I hate to even think about me going someplace else," Bryant continued several days later.

"When I re-signed here, they promised that they would build a contender and build a contender now. I don't want to have to wait anymore than I already have," he said.

"I know my patience is about as short as my 1-year old daughter. ... Here we are now, three years from then and my patience is really on `E,' so we really have to put our pedal to the metal and do something."

But it took a statement from an unnamed member of the Lakers’ front office that blamed him for the Shaq trade for Kobe to escalate the situation into a condition of total war. Bryant called the Lakers’ front office “a mess” and pleaded for Jerry West to be brought back to the franchise.

Kobe was rueful about opportunities the Lakers had in the past to trade for Baron Davis (salary dumped in 2005 by New Orleans to the Warriors), Ron Artest (traded to the Kings in 2006 for Peja Stojakovic) and Carlos Boozer.

Kevin Garnett was always supposed to be the player to join Bryant with the Lakers. This was the secret everyone within the league would talk about in those dark years stuck on bad teams after playing against each other in the 2004 Western Conference Finals.

Both players were reaching a point in which they were futilely trying to carry poorly constructed teams and they needed to be traded in the case of Garnett and the Timberwolves, or either scenario for Kobe and the Lakers. The two teams agreed upon a deal on the ownership level that would have been Garnett for Odom and Andrew Bynum, but the relationship Kevin McHale had with Danny Ainge ultimately routed him to the Celtics.

Another move the Lakers pursued that offseason was to deal Odom and Bynum to the Indiana Pacers for Jermaine O’Neal, while they also considered Bynum for Jason Kidd. Kobe also talked to Shawn Marion directly in 2007 about joining the Lakers. Kobe and his agent, Rob Pelinka, believed Mitch Kupchak was overly cautious and kept the Lakers from acquiring Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal or Kidd. This led to that famous amateur video in which Kobe impatiently said of Bynum: “ship his ass out, we talking about Jason Kidd!”

Without a trade to meaningfully improve the Lakers, Kobe pushed and pushed to leave the franchise and he thought Luol Deng was good enough to become the Scottie Pippen to his Michael Jordan. The Bulls had just beaten the defending champion Heat in the first round of the 2007 playoffs with a young roster that would be good for several years, but also had some win-now veterans like Ben Wallace.

The Lakers called his insurrection as a bluff. Dr. Buss was uncompromisingly defiant where owners and GMs of those teams that too easily traded away the most valuable and most difficult to acquire types of players in the NBA. It is a vicious and often fortuitous business to get players of Kobe’s caliber and sometimes even more so to keep them. Few owners have understood that as thoroughly as Buss. 

The only trades the Lakers were prepared to make involving Kobe were sending him to the Pistons for core players and picks, or to the Cavs for LeBron James. The Lakers never reached a point where they seriously entertained trading him.

Kobe always seemed to be more concerned with how people perceived his greatness and his status as a 'winner' than the pursuit of those ambitions for their own sake. Part of Kobe's myth-making was to not just be hyper-competitive, but to reveal the depths of his hyper-competitiveness. It is a weird level of self-consciousness to worry so excessively about what others think when his default nature has been at least a mild misanthrope. This was why that 2007 offseason showdown was such a ubiquitous display for public consumption with constant Ric Bucher reports as he was his chosen reporter spokesman before it became Adrian Wojnarowski later in his career.

This was the self-portraiture of Kobe that setup the second stage of his career. 

Derek Fisher returned to the Lakers in 2007 and that was a positive first step. Whether the Lakers needed to be persuaded by Kobe or not, the best thing they did was wait on the trade market and keep both Bynum and Odom while trading Kwame, Javaris Crittenton and the draft rights to Marc Gasol for Pau Gasol. 

The proposals from Kobe took many forms, but he seemed permanently and confusingly obsessed with playing with a great point guard despite so clearly having his best success with great big men. The first three titles were with Shaq and then the back-to-back in 2009 and 2010 came with Gasol, Bynum and Odom playing a combined 96 minutes per game at the two big spots that facilitated the greatness of those teams.

Chris Paul was a gettable target in 2011 and you would always hear from people about how Dr. Buss wanted the Lakers to move away from Jackson’s triangle to more of the up-tempo Showtime era Lakers. Kobe won four of his five titles with Fisher starting at point guard, a role player that had very little in common with Paul, Kidd, Baron Davis, even late career Steve Nash and especially not Rajon Rondo.

The 2012 final stand was Kobe believing in the exceptionalism of the Lakers and it seemed like he had reason to have that faith with a title core on paper in place when they traded for Nash and then Dwight Howard. The trio the Lakers envisioned was Kobe, Paul and Dwight, but Kobe, Gasol, Dwight and Nash was a Plan B that the popular consensus believed could at least go on deep playoff runs on a shorter window. It quickly fell apart in that lone season as all four were physically fragile, and Dwight had grown both physically and mentally fragile.

With Dwight leaving the Lakers for the Rockets in 2013 and Kobe recovering from a ruptured Achilles, his extension that fall basically resolved how the end of his career would play out. There was a 2014 recruitment of Carmelo Anthony in free agency and Kobe’s links to Rondo continued as they had for years. The Lakers were keeping Kobe and his evaporating mamba wine until retirement while also rebuilding entirely, which became its own prosperous nihilism. By that point, Kobe knew it meant more for his legacy to be a Laker for life than get one final chance for a ring as an add-on component.

Fashion designers are famously bad at dressing themselves and the basketball equivalent of that is how superstar players pick their teammates. Kobe was saved by the Lakers in not trading away Bynum for a mid-30s Jason Kidd when Pau Gasol was just a Kwame trade away in an old CBA salary dump, and for not playing under the statue of Michael Jordan with a Luol Deng who was not the Hall of Fame level talent he and the Bulls believed he was in 2007. Unlike LeBron and his own fraught situation, Kobe was saved from himself and he exerted control successfully in forcing urgency without compromising the team-building.