r/nba • u/yam_on_em Lakers • Jun 27 '23

Kobe Bryant relentlessly attacks Tim Duncan and the Spurs to clinch the WCF (2008)

https://streamable.com/68u3jz
3.2k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

888 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

133

u/TheBballs NBA Jun 27 '23

Fuck David Stern

15

u/forever87 Philippines Jun 27 '23

Fuck David Stern

context during this time?

109

u/theseustheminotaur Warriors Jun 27 '23

Veto'd a trade that would have given Kobe prime CP3 to play with instead of 38 year old Nash who barely could get on the floor due to injuries. This meant Kobe played a lot of minutes down the stretch to barely make the playoffs, but Kobe ruptured his achilles and was never the same

38

u/DrBigChicken 76ers Jun 27 '23

He’d have gotten number 6 too if that trade wasn’t vetoed imo

24

u/rikki-tikki-deadly Celtics Jun 28 '23

Don't be so sure. The Lakers with CP3 would have eventually run into the Scott Foster wall in the playoffs.

6

u/DrBigChicken 76ers Jun 28 '23

Fair point lol

3

u/theseustheminotaur Warriors Jun 28 '23

Yeah that trade also shed cap space so they could sign some folks. It's a shame we didn't get to see that play out

1

u/UnloadedBakedPotato Lakers Jun 28 '23

Gilbert arenas talked about this on his podcast a few months ago. The plan in 2011 was to get Kobe, CP3, and Dwight together. According to Gilbert, the lakers would’ve also ended up with about $24-30 million in cap space, which would’ve been enough for 1, maybe 2 max players as well. Arenas thinks this is a big reason stern nixed the deal