Knowing what we know now from the '96 draft...

[Haymaker]

holy shit.first phucking post in 5 years

He was waiting for the exact comment so he could reply. That's discipline.

[The Iron Fist]

I'd still take A.I. I don't feel like Nash or Kobe could have done what he did with the same teammates.

You mean having the DPOY & RPG leader, and 6MOY on the same team?

[rodman91]

Iverson.

[R.I.P.]

Tell me your kidding?? I don't even like kobe but to say you would still draft A.I. ahead of him is rediculous! Every GM in the league would take Kobe #1.

Really enjoyed your post. Looking forward to hearing from you again...........in five years.

[DirtySanchez]

Iverson.

Tell us why? Or do you just have one of those agendas?

AI was great but his style of play only lasted for how long with all the bumps and bruises. Also take away A.I.'s speed and you are left with?

Kobe will last as a dominant force in your franchise longer. Plays better defense and is a more versatile player then A.I. all that is proven over time.

So again why would you be a moron and take A.I. over Kobe?

[NugzHeat3]

Knowing what we know now kills the whole point of drafting. Kobe would go 1st.

Back then, I'm still drafting AI.

Roy Williams who coached MJ as an assistant at UNC and saw AI during his coaching years at Georgetown said AI might be the best guard he's ever seen.

AI had unreal potential. He was a great defensive player too playing tenacious full court pressure defense and stripping players straight up. John Thompson really committed on that end until Brown and Croce gave him the green light to chuck. He was also more of a team oriented player in college.

AI is one of the most underachieving players ever despite having a great career.

[PowerGlove]

Kobe going to a garbage team sitting behind Jerry Stackhouse would have worked REALLY WELL. SMH @ some of these posters. Kobe would have been crying by year three.

[rodman91]

Tell us why? Or do you just have one of those agendas?

AI was great but his style of play only lasted for how long with all the bumps and bruises. Also take away A.I.'s speed and you are left with?

Kobe will last as a dominant force in your franchise longer. Plays better defense and is a more versatile player then A.I. all that is proven over time.

So again why would you be a moron and take A.I. over Kobe?

Iverson
Mutombo
Eric Snow.
George Lynch
Tyron Hill
had same record in regular season with Shaq & Kobe lakers.Reached finals.

Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Caron Butler
Chucky Atkins
Chris Mihm.
had one of the worst record of Lakers franchise,missed playoffs.

Kobe had 2 seasons before Gasol arrives. Only success was 1st round loss.

I'm not moron, i just don't share bromance you have with kobe.

[DirtySanchez]

Iverson
Mutombo
Eric Snow.
George Lynch
Tyron Hill
had same record in regular season with Shaq & Kobe lakers.Reached finals.

Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Caron Butler
Chucky Atkins
Chris Mihm.
had one of the worst record of Lakers franchise,missed playoffs.

Kobe had 2 seasons before Gasol arrives. Only success was 1st round loss.

You are taking out the fact that Allen's Sixers teams played in the JV East back then. And Kobe's teams before Gasol, played in the West where the 8th seed had 50 win game seasons.

Playoffs he missed Kobe was injured.

And I would take Iverson's team over a team that had Smush Parker and Kwame Brown as their starters. Stop being ignorant.

[ImmortalD24]

Eh.. people are so willingly dumb, it isn't even funny.

Lakers' trade for Bryant has been misconstrued

By John Delong | Journal Reporter
Published: June 18, 2008

CHARLOTTE - Revisionist history is always fascinating.

It's not always accurate, but it's fascinating.

The Charlotte Hornets drafted Kobe Bryant with the 13th pick in the 1996 NBA Draft and promptly traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers for Vlade Divac.

Over the years, that story has been told, retold and embellished so much that the reality of that trade and the current perception are farther apart than, oh, Charlotte and Los Angeles. It's a timely topic because throughout this year's NBA Finals between the Lakers and Boston Celtics, we've heard all the revisionist history again. We've heard how Kobe and his agent shunned the Hornets, threatened that Kobe wouldn't play for the Hornets, and therefore orchestrated the trade to the Lakers. There has been more talk in Charlotte about Kobe and the Hornets the past two weeks than there has been about anything concerning the Bobcats.

A look back into the archives shows that the notion that Kobe orchestrated the trade is bogus. Kobe, in an interview during the 2000 Finals when the Lakers beat Indiana for the NBA title, said emphatically that he would have gladly played in Charlotte. Sure, he wanted to play for the Lakers, but who wouldn't? He also said that had he gone to college, he would have signed with Duke, so he liked the area.

And those who were involved in the wheeling and dealing at the time of the trade shoot down all the legends that have developed over the years.

"The deal was actually done a day ahead of time, and it was Vlade for a player to be named," said Bill Branch, the Hornets' head scout at the time who still operates out of Charlotte as a scout for the Seattle-now-Oklahoma City Sonics. "If I remember right, they didn't even tell us who they wanted us to pick until about five minutes before the pick was made. So it was never a matter of us actually drafting Kobe."

The trade was more about the Lakers' pursuit of Shaquille O'Neal in free agency and the Hornets' need to acquire a center than it was about Bryant.

In order to get far enough under the salary cap to make a valid pitch to O'Neal, the Lakers needed to unload Divac's contract, preferably to a team under the salary cap and preferably for a draft pick. The Hornets had traded Alonzo Mourning the previous year, were without a bona fide center, and were well under the cap after renouncing the rights to free agent Kenny Anderson. They would trade Larry Johnson to New York for Anthony Mason later that summer.

The Hornets reasoned that they could come out of the draft with no better than Vitaly Potapenko or Todd Fuller if they drafted a center, and jumped at the chance to trade the 13th pick for Divac.

"When you look back at it, when we made that trade, here was a 17-year-old kid who had played in high school," said Bob Bass, the Hornets' executive vice president of basketball operations at the time. "Twelve other teams passed on him. We made a decision to win now and not later. We had Dave Cowens as our first-year coach, and I wanted to give him a chance to win. I knew if we got Divac in here, we'd win. I didn't feel the same about Bryant. Without Divac, I thought we might have won 25 games."

The Hornets won 54 games, then a franchise record, the next season with Divac.

The Lakers might have been high on Bryant, but this was more about clearing up the cap room to make a run at O'Neal, whose contract was up in Orlando. Marc Fleisher, Divac's agent, remembers that the Lakers had a trade worked out to send Divac to Atlanta for the 25th pick if anything fell through with the Hornets. Had that scenario played out, there's little or no way that Bryant would have fallen all the way to the 25th pick, so Bryant and the Lakers couldn't have orchestrated anything.

"There were three teams involved at first -- Charlotte, Atlanta and Sacramento," Fleisher said. "Sacramento didn't work out for whatever reason, and then it was basically Charlotte or Atlanta. They asked us where Vlade would rather go, and he said Charlotte."


"Jerry West might be the only person who can really answer that, but I just think it (Bryant's stardom) would be very hard to predict, because you've got stories of guys who turned out good and stories of guys who turned out bad," Branch said. "The year before, L.A. wasn't even in the draft and they made a move to get into the second round at the last second, and they picked Frankie King out of Western Carolina. They specifically made a move to get one kid. So when you see moves like that and then they go for Kobe, you've got to think they're taking stabs.

"And I don't mean that negatively. I just mean for someone to say now that they knew Michael Jordan was going to be what he was, they're kidding themselves. We all thought Kobe was going to be good. But how do you really know?"

snipped out portions... entire article: http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2...-misconstrued/

[lakers_forever]

Iverson
Mutombo
Eric Snow.
George Lynch
Tyron Hill
had same record in regular season with Shaq & Kobe lakers.Reached finals.

Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Caron Butler
Chucky Atkins
Chris Mihm.
had one of the worst record of Lakers franchise,missed playoffs.

Kobe had 2 seasons before Gasol arrives. Only success was 1st round loss.

at this guy.

Kobe led a team with Smush Parker, Odom, Kwame Brown, Luke Walton in the starting lineup to 45 wins. What else did you want him to do?
Comparing that Sixers team to that Lakers is just insane.

Answer: If you replaced Kobe with a decent 2-guard (someone like Jamal Crawford) for the entire 2005-06 Lakers season, they would have won between 15 and 20 games. I can say that in complete confidence. Terrible team. When Smush Parker and Kwame Brown are your third- and fourth-best players, you shouldn't even be allowed to watch the playoffs on TV. Throw Kobe in the mix and they're headed for 45 wins. So he's been worth 25 victories for them. Minimum.

[NugzHeat3]

Iverson
Mutombo
Eric Snow.
George Lynch
Tyron Hill
had same record in regular season with Shaq & Kobe lakers.Reached finals.

Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Caron Butler
Chucky Atkins
Chris Mihm.
had one of the worst record of Lakers franchise,missed playoffs.

Kobe had 2 seasons before Gasol arrives. Only success was 1st round loss.

Get real man.

I like AI a hell of a lot more than Kobe but AI's team is clearly better.

They're both putrid offensively but AI's team is full of good defenders and scrappy role players.

Put Kobe on that team and you're still getting to the finals.

[Funnyfuka]

Really enjoyed your post. Looking forward to hearing from you again...........in five years.

[The Iron Fist]

Iverson
Mutombo
Eric Snow.
George Lynch
Tyron Hill
had same record in regular season with Shaq & Kobe lakers.Reached finals.

Kobe Bryant
Lamar Odom
Caron Butler
Chucky Atkins
Chris Mihm.
had one of the worst record of Lakers franchise,missed playoffs.

Kobe had 2 seasons before Gasol arrives. Only success was 1st round loss.

I'm not moron, i just don't share bromance you have with kobe.

From the bolded, who was the DPOY and RPG leader?
Who was the 6MOY?

[ImmortalD24]

Get real man.

I like AI a hell of a lot more than Kobe but AI's team is clearly better.

They're both putrid offensively but AI's team is full of good defenders and scrappy role players.

Put Kobe on that team and you're still getting to the finals.

Good post. In addiction, people seriously need to start considering the conference strength. Not all runs to the finals are equal.



The eastern conference has been the leastern conference from the time MJ retired till about 2007-08 season with the formation of the Boston Celtics. There's a reason why LeBron's 2007 Cavs made it to the finals and 08, 09 and 10 Cavs didn't even sniff near it.. and no it isn't because the Cavs roster got worse, it got infinitely better.. as did James.


I find it odd how people seem to overlook this glaring factor.