Recent Los Angeles Lakers rumors touch on how LeBron James ended up with the organization courtesy of none other than Kobe Bryant.
Los Angeles Lakers rumors have begun popping up with the regular season on the horizon. However, recent Lakers rumors go back to the summertime during free agency.
As odd as it may sound for most die-hard fans of the Los Angeles Lakers that have come to loathe one LeBron James, take a moment to pause….Kobe Bean Bryant paved the way for The King to build his new kingdom in the City of Angels.
Per a report from The Athletic via Yahoo Sports, Kobe Bryant urged Lakers majority owner Jeanie Buss to clean house. That included firing her brother, team president Jim Buss, and longtime Lakers general manager, Mitch Kupchak, during the 2017-18 NBA season.
Buss would listen to Bryant and replace Buss and Kupchap with Magic Johnson as team president. Later on, Bryant’s former agent, Rob Pelinka as GM.
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"“Cut it all out at once,” Bryant told Buss. I know it’s hard to do, but if you want to turn this ship around and turn it around sooner rather than later, then you’ve got to make those hard decisions … I know who we’re trying to get; we know who we’re trying to get, so that player is not going to come here with all of this s— going on. It’s not going to happen.“So if you do want to have that focus, and go after that player, then I’m telling you that you’ve gotta clean house, and you’ve gotta just reshuffle the deck and start anew. …“As a player, it’s like, listen, it’s a cultural thing. You’ve got to have the right culture around, especially for him at this stage of his career. You don’t want to come to a team and deal with a bunch of bulls—, right? You don’t want to come here and be part of an organization where the walls are talking and stuff is getting out left and right and you have this camp and that camp.”"
One of the more shocking aspects of this past NBA offseason wasn’t LeBron James joining the Los Angeles Lakers. Rather, it was how the die-hard fans would accept him. Thus far results have been mixed, to say the least, with a large number of fans vocalizing their displeasure with James all the while touting their love for Kobe Bryant.
Jeanie Buss herself took to the airwaves on the Rich Eisen Show to show her dismay with the reaction of James’ signing with that certain segment of Kobe Fans.
"“I think that any Laker fan… they’re not Laker fans if they’re not happy about LeBron joining the team,” Buss said.“There was some unrest and some uneasiness and I just think those are troublemakers that don’t get it.“I think Los Angeles is going to be very proud of the way that LeBron will represent the Lakers and they’re going to fall in love with him too.”"
It’s a divide that doesn’t have to be yet the course of a long NBA season could soften their stance of being displeased.
Also with the knowledge that one legend opened the door for another could be the right recipe for the soul that will allow the majority of Lakers fan to embrace The King as he sits on his new throne, a throne that was handed to him by Kobe Bryant.