Shaquille O'Neal Allegedly Threatened to Kill Kobe Bryant Once

The 2003-04 season was a crazy one for the Lakers.

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The 2003-04 NBA season was a crazy one for the Lakers. It was the year they signed both Gary Payton and Karl Malone in an effort to help the aging superstars win an NBA title. It was the year Kobe Bryant dealt with his rape trial. And it was, of course, the year Kobe and Shaquille O'Neal realized that they simply couldn't coexist anymore.

Bleacher Report just ran an oral history of that crazy season here. And while it features a slew of quotes from the players listed above as well as other Lakers players, coaches, and executives, it's a quote from Lakers vice president of public relations John Black that stands out. While discussing that star-studded team, he revealed that Shaq and Kobe's rift was every bit as bad as it's been reported. In fact, the way he remembers it, Shaq once threatened to murder Kobe during an argument.

"Mostly it was Shaq and Kobe didn't like each other," he told BR, "but it didn't affect them on the court. They would say something about the other, on or off the record, but it didn't become confrontational more than two or three times over the eight years. When Kobe gave the statement to Jim Gray where he went off calling Shaq fat and lazy, that was one of the times. There was a really bad one, early on. Brian Shaw had to pull them apart. Shaq threatened to murder Kobe."

Despite this, Black says that people shouldn't wonder "What if…?" when they think about Shaq and Kobe. They had a nice run and, in his eyes, that's more amazing than the fact that the Lakers decided to split them up after the 2003-04 season.

"I've said this a million times to media guys: When it ended, it was portrayed as extremely disappointing and how could we let it happen that Shaq and Kobe couldn't work things out," he told BR. "I looked at it differently. It did work out. They spent eight years together and they didn't like each other and it was difficult and that thing could've ended in two years or three years. It could've gone sour earlier. But despite the discomfort of it, the disharmony and the dislike, they stayed together for eight years, won three championships together. People look back at the great run of harmony Magic and Kareem had together, but it was the same amount of time Shaq and Kobe spent together. I think it was pretty phenomenal that it did work out as long as it did."

Good point. When you look at it that way, it is kind of amazing that Shaq and Kobe made their dysfunctional relationship work for eight years.

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[via SLAM]

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