Jerry West: Teammates 'didn't have the skill to play as hard as (Kobe)'
Jerry West is one of the greatest players in NBA history, his silhouette gracing the league's logo. It shouldn't come as a surprise he believes Kobe Bryant - the player the then-Los Angeles Lakers general manager acquired as a 17-year-old in 1996 - now belongs in that conversation too.
"I think on the balance ... (Bryant is) a player for the decades, simply one of the greatest players that ever played the game," West told ESPN's Baxter Holmes. "And I'm talking about a handful of guys that ever played the game."
West, now a special advisor for the Golden State Warriors, narrated a tribute video to Bryant on Thursday in his last visit to the Bay Area as a player.
"He was a showman, but he also was a winner," West said. "And he has (left) a legacy throughout the world."
West traded center Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Hornets for Bryant not long after they selected him 13th in the 1996 NBA Draft. That the teenager dropped that low has always been a mystery to West, although high school players jumping straight to the NBA was a new phenomenon at the time.
"Frankly, I thought he should have been taken No. 1, but that was my thought," said West. "I'm surprised other people did not draft him. I'm really surprised, because he was really special."
West also touched on Bryant's agent Arn Tellem orchestrating the move to the Lakers, which included warning off the New Jersey Nets - who selected eighth that year and ended up with Kerry Kittles.
"Kobe's parents got involved," West said. "And he would really basically try to tell people that he didn't want to play so close to his hometown (of Philadelphia). So to say that we did this on our own would be fiction. We had a lot of help along the way."
In terms of Bryant's notorious work ethic, West summarized his stubbornness quite factually.
"Sometimes he would disappoint me with some of the things he would say, in particular with regards to players who would not play as hard as him," West said.
"Number one, they couldn't play as hard as him, but number two, they didn't have the skill to play as hard as him."