Kobe Bryant On Smush Parker: “He shouldn’t have been in the NBA”
Cary Edmondson-US PRESSWIRE
We didn’t need Kobe Bryant to state the obvious. We’ve all been saying it for years. Way back when Kobe’s brilliance was belittled by the fact that he was playing for a team with both Kwame Brown and Smush Parker in the starting five it was nothing short of a miracle that the Lakers took the Phoenix Suns the distance in the playoffs.
Of course had the Lakers won that series we would have all been praising the efforts of Kobe and the coaching wizardry of Phil Jackson. Instead Lakers faithful could only bemoan the fact that Steve Nash led the Suns to a victory in Game 7 erasing a 3-2 series deficit and crushing our collective spirits.
Now that Nash and KB24 are on the same squad Kobe can finally say exactly how he felt about that moment. In typical Kobe fashion he kept it a little too real even if his convo with Nash was a lighthearted one. Bryant told the L.A. Times exactly why Nash and the Suns got the better of Kobe and his Lakers back then.
"“I tell Steve, ‘You won MVP but I was playing with Smush Parker. He’s playing with [Leandro] Barbosa. I’m playing with Smush and Kwame [Brown]. My goodness. Smush Parker was the worst. He shouldn’t have been in the NBA, but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard.”"
Smush bashing aside, you did catch that shot at the Lakers’ front office there too, right?
“Too cheap to pay for a point guard”. Ouch!
But the truth can be painful and it was certainly a trip to the dentist office every time we had to get our hopes up for Smush not to take bad shots or Kwame not to get called for traveling every other time down the court.
For Kobe this seems to be more about getting the last word on the Smush Parker experiment. Clearly those two don’t like each other. Smush took a break from his hectic schedule in China, Thailand, Burma or wherever it is he’s playing these days to bash Bryant a couple years ago. Not that Kobe or the rest of the world cares much about what Parker has to say but you know it had to eat up Bryant just a little bit.
No matter the true feelings of either Bryant or Parker the fact of the matter is Kobe’s words ring true. After leaving the Lakers Smush got one more shot in the NBA with the Miami Heat. He didn’t make it two months in South Beach and has never seen an NBA roster again.
As for Kobe assertion that the front office was “too cheap”…he’ll have to take that up with Dr. Buss who I’m sure could care less at this point. Hopefully this is the last we’ll ever speak of Smush Parker.