There was always something uncanny about watching Kobe Bryant. The way he attacked defenders with a sudden, slicing step-back.
The glare. The calculated rage. The way he bit his jersey when locked in.
And for anyone who'd seen Michael Jordan in the '90s, it didn't take long to realize what was happening. Bryant wasn't just influenced by his boyhood hero. He was wired like him -- a mirror image in motion, from footwork to fire.
The five-time NBA champion played with many superstars over the course of his career -- some he wished to have played with, including Jordan. The Los Angeles Lakers icon explained what really drove his desire to team up with Jordan.
"I'd really enjoy to be teammates with Jordan, because I just feel like practices would be very interesting," Bryant said "You go to practice and you know it's on. The fun of it is going to practice every day and competing."
That wasn't just lip service. It was rooted in how Bryant viewed the game. For him, practice wasn't preparation. It was war. And in Jordan, he saw someone who would've raised the stakes every single day.
Both players carried an obsessive competitive streak that blurred the line between discipline and mania. The Chicago icon had built his legend on that hunger -- six NBA championships, five MVP awards and countless stories of practice battles so intense that teammates walked away in silence.
Bryant, who entered the NBA at 17 years old in 1996, didn't just look up to Jordan from afar. He studied him. Copied him. Hunted him. But deep down, there was always a wish he never got to fulfill -- playing beside him.
The five-time league MVP was at the latter end of his Chicago tenure during that time. They crossed paths a few times on the court, but when the Lakers star was nearing his own peak, Jordan had already retired again. He then returned for a short stint with the Washington Wizards from 2001 to 2003 -- a period marked more by moments of nostalgia than dominance.
Still, even that version of Jordan gave Bryant something to chase. In their final matchup on March 28, 2003, Bryant dropped 55 points on the Wizards, as if to salute and surpass the man who shaped him.
But being opponents was never the dream. What Bryant really wanted was the tension, the electricity of sharing a locker room with Jordan -- both of them in their prime.
That never happened, of course. Bryant stayed with the Lakers his entire 20-year career. But the curiosity never left. He wasn't guessing what those Jordan practices might've been like. He knew, deep down, because he ran the same kind of practices in Los Angeles. Ruthless. Unforgiving. Relentless. Just like Jordan once did with the Bulls.
"It makes you better when you have teammates that push you," Bryant said. "That'd be really fun."
During his run with the Lakers, Bryant became infamous for pushing teammates -- sometimes too far. Smush Parker, Dwight Howard, and even longtime friend Pau Gasol were on the receiving end of his brutally high standards. Bryant once described practice as the "real game" and didn't hesitate to call out teammates publicly if they weren't living up to the Lakers' legacy.
His work ethic was one of the reasons he didn't always get along with Shaquille O'Neal. That mindset translated into results as he won five NBA championships, two Finals MVP awards, 33,643 career points and 18 NBA All-Star selections.
Yet behind all the friction was a belief -- that greatness could only come from pressure. The same belief Jordan held during his time with the Bulls. There was something else, too -- an unspoken desire to be seen not just as Jordan's successor, but as his equal. Not in stats. Not in rings. But in mindset and will. And what better place to prove that than behind closed doors, where no one's watching, just two apex predators clawing for every inch.