Gilbert Arenas thinks Michael Jordan’s shadow helped turn a tense Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal relationship into a full-blown fracture.
On the Ball in the Family podcast, Arenas said the conversation around Kobe changed once the Lakers completed their three-peat in 2002. In his view, that’s when the praise got tangled up with the Jordan comparison - and when the criticism started to hit harder.
“A lot of people don’t remember this. Kobe won his third ring, and Kobe was the next Michael Jordan.
Kobe was the shooting guard that had three championships. Jordan came back into the league.”
“So when Kobe won his third, Jordan’s entering the league to play for the Wizards. So what happens is Kobe’s winning his third championship, and then everybody’s like, ‘Oh, Kobe already got three.
He’s the next Michael. He’s about to have, like, six, seven.'”
“And then the Jordan media rampage: ‘Oh, well, he don’t have Finals MVP. He’s not the best player.
He’s more like a Robin, more like Scottie Pippen.’ And that’s where that came from.”
“So they basically did his three rings, said they’re not valid to Michael Jordan’s three rings as the main player, as the Finals MVP. And Kobe’s looking at, ‘What? You didn’t say that shit before.'”
“So that summer, that’s when him and Shaq started having smoke, and Kobe’s like, ‘No, this needs to be my team.’ And then that’s where the fallout kind of happened.
It was over because that Michael Jordan. And then it’s the same media who’s tearing down LeBron.”
The timeline Arenas was talking about centered on Kobe’s first three titles with Shaq. Bryant entered the league in 1996, then won titles in 2000, 2001 and 2002. He was just 23 when he picked up his third championship.
Jordan’s path was different, and the source material notes one detail that matters here: he entered the NBA in 1984, won his first three championships from 1991 through 1993, then retired briefly, played baseball and returned to the Washington Wizards in the fall of 2001. He later added three more titles from 1996 through 1998, with Finals MVP honors in all six championship runs.
Arenas’s point is that the standards around Kobe shifted once people started lining his resume up directly with Jordan’s. Jordan had six Finals MVPs.
Shaq, meanwhile, had won Finals MVP in 2000, 2001 and 2002. That comparison, Arenas said, made Kobe’s role feel smaller than it had before, and it pushed him harder to prove he was the guy.
The Kobe-Shaq partnership was already carrying baggage before 2002. Their differences in personality and leadership had been building since the late 1990s, and Phil Jackson later described repeated friction between the two stars. The feud then spilled into public view during the 2003-04 season, when they traded barbs through the media.
The Lakers’ 2004 Finals loss to the Detroit Pistons closed the book on that era. Shaq was dealt to the Miami Heat, while Kobe stayed in Los Angeles. Years later, Bryant answered the biggest criticism in Arenas’s argument by winning titles as the Lakers’ clear centerpiece in 2009 and 2010, taking Finals MVP both times.
Jordan may not have created the Kobe-Shaq split on his own. But according to Arenas, the way Kobe’s early rings were measured against Jordan’s added fuel to a relationship that was already cracking.
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