Lakers News: Shaquille O'Neal-Kobe Bryant Played Up Animus, Per Olden Polynice

We're not so sure.

Longtime NBA center Olden Polynice, selected with the eight pick in the 1987 NBA draft, voiced an interesting opinion on the dynamic between Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant when the two were teammates on your Los Angeles Lakers. Polynice was alternately playing with the Sacramento Kings, Seattle SuperSonics, and Utah Jazz during the Shaqobe era.

During a recent interview with Bally Sports' Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson, Polynice weighed in, claiming that rumors of the duo's mutual loathing for one another were greatly exaggerated, perhaps even by the two Laker greats.

Kobe & Shaq “never hated each other” during their Lakers playing days notes @OldenPolynice1 while appearing on @BallySports.

“They played that up to the point where people really believed it.”

▶️ Press Play To Find Out Why pic.twitter.com/a9QOSo76SP

— 👑 Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson (@ScoopB) September 18, 2022

“You know everybody's talking about [how] they hated each other, they never hated each other. I think they played that up to the point where people really believed it," Polynice said. "There's always animosity with athletes, especially strong alpha males. There's always gonna be issues, but I just don't believe there was hate. There was a lot of love there. I think what Kobe was mad about with Shaquille... [Kobe's] whole routine and everything [went] to the point of madness, as far as his workout ethic [went], but he just felt like, as great as Shaquille was, he should've had the same kind of work ethic."

It certainly seems like there was plenty of mutual dislike between the duo, with O'Neal being frustrated about Bryant not sharing the ball enough with teammates, and Bryant conversely being upset that O'Neal struggled with his fitness. Here are some other documented low-lights of the duo's very, very public feud:

• During the team's lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, in which head coaching duties were split between Del Harris and Kurt Rambis, O'Neal was talking to gathered reporters about what ailed the team's chemistry. Per Roland Lazenby in his 2006 book "The Show," O'Neal pointed at Bryant and said, "There's the problem."
• In O'Neal's own memoir, "Shaq Uncut: My Story," co-written with Jackie MacMullan of The Ringer and ESPN, O'Neal felt that interim head coach Kurt Rambis showed preferential treatment to Bryant over ol' Shaq Diesel.
• According to Mike Wise of the New York Times, O'Neal reportedly declared midway through the team's 1999-2000 season that Bryant was "playing too selfishly for us to win." The club would go on to secure a 67-15 record and claim the NBA title from the Pacers in a six-game Finals series.
• Phil Jackson's longtime assistant coach Tex Winter had joined his old Chicago Bulls leader on the L.A. bench during that fateful 1999-2000 season. Roland Lazenby wrote in "The Show" that Winter was struck by what he perceived to be a severe loathing of O'Neal for Bryant. "There was a lot of hatred in [O'Neal's] heart," Winter said. "Kobe just took it and kept going." Winter relayed that O'Neal often approached the team's front office and expressed his skepticism that Bryant could help the team win a championship. Winter himself did not agree with this assessment, and edited a video compilation of Bryant performances to show how he flowed within the construct of the triangle offense that Jackson and Winter implemented when they arrived.
• During the 2000-01 season, which would yield a second straight title, things began a bit rockily by the Lakers' lofty standards. O'Neal complained in coded language through the press. Per Jorge L. Ortiz of the San Francisco Chronicle, O'Neal said, "When it was clear that everything went through me [last season], the outcome of it was [a record of] 67–15, playing with enthusiasm, the city jumping up and down and a parade. And now we're 23–11. You figure it out ... I don't know why anybody else would want to change – other than selfish reasons." Ortiz wrote that Bryant responded to the perceived criticism by noting, "He obviously wants to go back to having [A.C. Green[ here and [Glen Rice] here... Things change, things evolve, and you just have to grow with that change." 
• In a blowout December 28th 115-79 victory against the Phoenix Suns during the 2000-01 season, Bryant scored 38 points on 12-of-19 shooting (plus 11-of-11 free throw shooting), but O'Neal had just 18 while shooting 7-of-14 from the floor. Afterwards, O'Neal demanded a trade from team president Mitch Kupchak, who later acknowledged the request, but told Tim O'Brien of the Los Angeles Times that, "You have to take the conversation for what the moment was... Never for a second did I consider it. This is something that will be worked out."
• Bryant had to sit out the team's 2003 training camp, due to a knee issue and his Colorado arrest. O'Neal took the window to call the star-studded 2003-04 Lakers "my team," per ESPN's Marc Stein.
• Shaq and MacMullan wrote in his autobiography that the tension between Bryant and O'Neal was so fraught during the 2003 preseason that former teammate-turned-scout Brian Shaw forced the two to talk out their issues with each other after a contentious early preseason game.
• Phil Jackson wrote a whole book about that troubled 2003-04 run, "The Last Season: A Team In Search Of Its Soul," essentially excoriating Bryant's behavior (albeit with some unflattering anecdotes about O'Neal, Karl Malone, and others as well).
• After O'Neal was on the Heat, the two frenemies-turned-foes were set to face off for the first time on Christmas Day 2004. They traded memorable car analogy barbs in the press prior to the game, and Kobe got into it with O'Neal's new Miami running mate, Dwyane Wade. The Heat would go on to win, 104-102.

Bottom line, the relationship between O'Neal and Bryant became so undeniably vitriolic that they essentially compelled team owner Dr. Jerry Buss and team president Mitch Kupchak to choose between the two all-time Laker greats.

Here's a clip from a very revealing interview between Bryant and O'Neal, where they acknowledge that the tension was so bad following their five-game 2004 NBA Finals loss to the Detroit Pistons, that both players knew a separation felt imminent.

When he sat down for a postgame presser following the team's defeat against the Detroit Pistons, O'Neal addressed the uncertain futures of Bryant and Jackson, both of whom were now free agents. The center opined that everybody would need to operate with an eye towards their own best interests.

"After the game in the Finals, we lost, we had that team dinner," O'Neal said in the TNT clip. "[Team owner Dr. Jerry Buss] came in and he sat by you, and your beautiful wife Vanessa, he didn't say nothing to me. I said to myself, 'Uh oh, I'm in trouble.'"

"So two days later, me and [his kids] little Shareef and Mimi, we're at the counter, Muholland estate eating Frosted Flakes, and I hear Mitch Kupchak say, 'We will be taking inquiries on Shaq.' I just dropped the bowl, like, 'What?'"

"There was a story in ESPN, I think it was ESPN Magazine, and they asked you a question about me and Penny," Bryant told O'Neal of what prompted him to explore signing with the Chicago Bulls in free agency. "And you said we were essentially the same. And I looked at that and said, 'Uh, no, we're not'... When I retire, I don't want people to say, 'Okay, he only won because of Shaq.' As unfair as that is, Magic never won without Cap, right? Michael never won without Scottie. But here I am, getting stuck with this argument, which is not fair, yet this is the argument people will make, and I'm not okay with that. Therefore, I knew, 'Okay, I gotta go.'" Bryant added that he was looking to leave the Lakers to join the Chicago Bulls that summer.

"You were gonna leave sunny California to go to cold-ass Chicago?" O'Neal responded.

"Vanessa signed off on moving out to [north shore Chicago suburb] Lake Forest," Bryant said. 

But O'Neal, who had no inkling that the Bulls deal was actually in the works until this TNT interview (years after both men had retired, was also working to move on. After the All-NBA big man heard that the Lakers were open to trading O'Neal, he angrily demanded that Kupchak follow through, according to his memoir. This time, Kupchak listened, shipping off O'Neal to the Miami Heat for a boatload of younger players and draft equity.

"We went on vacation to Italy, and I got a phone call," Bryant told O'Neal for TNT. "Rob Pelinka called me, and he said, 'Shaq just requested a trade.' I was like, 'Well there goes Chicago, because there was no way the Lakers are gonna lose me and Shaq in the same year.'"

Bryant returned to L.A. after all, though he did later try to get traded to the Bulls or Clippers in the summer of 2007. O'Neal would go on to win his next title first, in 2006 with the Heat. Bryant, now flanked by Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum, appeared in three straight NBA Finals from 2008-10, winning the last two.

There is something of a happy ending to this story. Though the duo would never reunite on the hardwood as players, they did eventually achieve an amicable respect with their playing days in the rearview. Their families remained close as well. Bryant's check-in text to O'Neal's son Shareef, on the morning of Bryant's final helicopter flight, was one of the last he ever sent.