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It's no secret the two superstars clashed in L.A., but things didn't hit rock bottom until Bryant gave a particularly
nasty interview.
Deadspin offers excerpts of Shaq Uncut: My Story, Shaquille O’Neal’s autobiogaraphy written with Jackie MacMullan, which hits on topics such as his rocky relationship with Kobe Bryant and a feud with Pat Riley that led to his departure from the Miami Heat.
Here’s what Shaq has to say about the Lakers before the 2003-04 season, his last in L.A., and also the one that followed Bryant's sexual assault charge in Colorado: “I'm on edge because I don't have a new deal, and Kobe is on edge because he might be going to jail, so we're taking it out on each other. Just before the start of the '03-'04 season the coach staff called us in and said, ‘No more public sparring or you'll get fined.’ ... Phil (Jackson) was tired of it. Karl Malone and Gary Payton were sick of it. ...
“So what happens? Immediately after that Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn't even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was ‘lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free.’ I'm sitting there watching this interview and I'm gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we'd stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, ‘I'm going to kill him.’”
... From that day on, I was done dealing with Kobe. I was done dealing with Jim Gray, too.”
O’Neal left the Lakers for the Heat after that season, and he goes on in the book about an intense encounter which Riley.
“My ticket out of Miami was punched in mid-February 2008," Shaq says in the book. "There was a lot of tension between Pat and the players. So we're about to start practice and Jason Williams comes in about ten seconds late. Pat being Pat, he starts swearing at him and screaming, ‘Get the hell out of here!’...
I tell Pat we're a team and we need to stick together, not throw guys out of the gym. Pat is screaming at me and says if I don't like it, then I should get the hell out of practice, too.
"That's when I said, 'Why don't you make me?'"
From there, Shaq writes, he and Riley got into a face-to-face confrontation as several Heat players tried to break them up.
“I finally turn around and tell (Alonzo Mourning), ‘Don't worry, I'm not going to hit the man. Do you think I'm crazy?"
The book hits shelves on Nov. 15 and can also be ordered on Amazon.
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