There was one aspect of the Mamba Mentality that Smush Parker was not a fan of while playing alongside Kobe Bryant as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers.
Parker spoke on Pablo Torre Finds Out about how he and Bryant did not speak for two seasons, even though both of them were starters and their lockers were right next to each other.
"The man never spoke to me," Parker said on the podcast. "I wasn't the 12th man on the bench. I wasn't the call-up from the G League who was just filling a roster spot. I started with this man. I was his co-worker. Like we shared a cubicle side-by-side. How do you do that for two seasons and never hold a conversation?"
Parker also shared a story about trying to strike up a chat with Bryant about a football game from the night before. "He looked at me, honestly, looked at me and said, 'You can't talk to me, you need more accolades under your belt before you come talk to me,'" he recalled. "He was dead serious. ... So that set the tone. Never spoke to him again, or tried to, for two years—as the starting point guard."
Parker recalled a 2007 interview in New York City in which he was asked about playing with Bryant and called it "an overrated experience." Five years later, Kobe threw some not-so-subtle jabs at Smush in a Los Angeles Times interview, which got brought up by Torre.
"I tell Steve, you won MVP but I was playing with Smush Parker. ... He's playing with [Leandro] Barbosa. I'm playing with Smush and Kwame [Brown]. My goodness..." Bryant said. "Smush Parker was the worst. ... He shouldn't have been in the NBA, but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard. We let him walk on."
Parker believes Bryant's remark was retaliation to what he said, but he also claims that all the barbs exchanged afterward were caused by a "snowball I created."
"The problems in L.A. end and start with Kobe Bryant," Smush said on Pablo Torre Finds Out. "And I felt that way because as the leader, as the captain, as the star of the team, if you don't communicate with your teammates, how is a team supposed to be successful?
The discussion starts at the 23-minute mark up top.
