“Not the killer me and Mike are”: Fox Sports analyst claims Kobe Bryant said LeBron James wasn’t made for LA before $154 million move
LeBron James likely will be spending the rest of his Hall of Fame career with the LA Lakers, barring a sudden change of mind or another "The Decision"-like interview. But Fox Sports analyst Doug Gottlieb claimed that Kobe Bryant once expressed concerns about James being ready for Hollywood.
In an episode of his radio show last year, Gottlieb said that in 2018, right after James signed with the Lakers for $154 million, Bryant discussed if James could leave an impression in Los Angeles like he did in Cleveland and Miami.
"I had drinks with him at your boy (Jim) Rome's favorite place, Javier's, and it was the night before I actually guest-hosted Cowherd (Colin Cowherd's television show, "The Herd")," Gottlieb recalled. "And of the things he talked about, it was ... LeBron was coming to town. It was already done.
"And he said to me unequivocally, 'LeBron does not get, know or understand LA, and he's not built for it the way I'm built for it.' He's like, 'Look, man! I shot those two airballs when I was 17, and I thought the world came crashing down. And my reaction to it was I lived in the gym all summer.
"The way in which the people reacted to those airballs – shots that I shouldn't have shot; they were bad shots that I missed by a mile – fueled me my whole career. I took negativity, and it fueled me. And when there was negativity with me and (Shaquille O'Neal), it fueled me. That's not what fuels LeBron. He's just built differently. ... He is not the killer that me and Mike (Michael Jordan) are.'"
Gottlieb then recalled Kobe Bryant saying that he did not see LeBron James as a "savage competitor," which he likened to a "killer that wants to kill you and your whole family."
Kobe Bryant claims LeBron James 'just wants to be loved'
Kobe Bryant believed, as claimed by Doug Gottlieb, that LeBron James would rather be loved in Los Angeles by the Lakers fans than be the "savage competitor" who would bring the Lakers back to prominence at a time that their fellow Crypto.com Arena tenants, the Clippers, are already catching up.
"'LeBron just wants to be loved, wants to play ball, and wants to win games," Gottlieb recalled Bryant saying.
Doug Gottlieb implicitly vouched that Kobe Bryant said that by adding that Bryant would be open to discussing that with everyone had he survived his fatal helicopter crash in January 2020.
The accident came just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic that stopped the 2019-2020 NBA season for a few months before LeBron James and the LA Lakers eventually ruled the league inside a bubble in Orlando.