It's been years now since the Los Angeles Lakers made a choice to keep Kobe Bryant and let Shaquille O'Neal go to Miami. The Hollywood drama has seeped out of the Lakers locker room since that trade. O'Neal and Bryant seem to have come to an understanding. Yet, with a Lakers team on the verge of another potential postseason break-up ("Kobe's Late Mistakes"), the "what if" scenarios surrounding the decisions of 2004 remain intriguing.
What if Kobe Bryant had been traded instead of Shaquille O'Neal? Would the Lakers have more banners hanging in the rafters of Staples Center ? Could Bryant have lifted another team to the championship between then and now?
My take on the situation is that the Lakers would have had to replace Bryant with someone of a similar level of talent to win more championships with Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal was done leading teams to the NBA Finals at that point. (I know some people will disagree.)
After the Split
O'Neal obviously has success sooner than Kobe Bryant did after the two started playing for different teams. In Miami , Shaquille O'Neal won a championship in his first season with the team. Averaging nearly 23 points and 10 rebounds per game, the Big Diesel was playing with a full tank of gas. But that didn't last. Injuries came and kept coming and O'Neal's first championship with the Heat was his last, ever.
With shorter seasons and limited playing time, O'Neal's effectiveness and his numbers took a bit of a dive. He was still a force through his last years in the NBA, but O'Neal was never again close to MVP form. Kobe Bryant's story is very much the opposite of O'Neal's.
Climbing back into the Finals took Bryant years. Rebuilding in Los Angeles took the team through failure, smirched Bryant's name as a selfish, ball-hog, and finally, after the acquisition of Pau Gasol, saw Kobe Bryant competing again in the NBA Finals. Since O'Neal left the Lakers, Kobe Bryant's numbers have spiked occasionally but for the most part have remained steady. Consistency has been one of the hallmarks of Bryant's career after the split in 2004. A consistent scorer, consistently pushing his teammates to get better, consistently being over-looked for the MVP award (with the one obvious exceptional season), and consistently making the All-Star team, Kobe Bryant has grown into a statesman and exemplary figure in the NBA.
When Shaquille O'Neal left Los Angeles , Bryant held the keys to the franchise for the first time. With yearly scoring averages all above 25.3 points per game along with rebounding and assists averages at roughly 5 apiece, Bryant's star has continued to shine brightly. It's been eight seasons of scrapping and surgery, but Kobe has remained Kobe.
During the same period, O'Neal's stats were on the decline. That doesn't mean his numbers weren't impressive. He played well. He played like Shaquille O'Neal, but like a Shaq that got older every year, scoring over 15 ppg and rebounding nearly 10 rpg most seasons between 2004 and his retirement in 2011.
In my opinion, the Lakers made the right choice in keeping Bryant in 2004. The Lakers would have been a team on the decline since 2004 if Bryant had departed and O'Neal had stayed. This is no knock on O'Neal. He was great; one of the best ever. But, as of today, we don't have to talk about Kobe Bryant's play in the past tense.
Eric Martin is a lifelong basketball fan living in the Los Angeles area, lucky to have lived in Illinois during Jordan's reign and in Philadelphia when Allen Iverson was in his prime.
More from this Contributor:Kobe Not Finished Breaking Records
Andrew Bynum the Next Franchise Player for the Los Angeles Lakers
Sources:
Yahoo!Sports - - Hoopedia - - Basketball Reference
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