Shaq picks best pose for Kobe statue outside Staples Center

by
Noah Graham / National Basketball Association / Getty

Kobe Bryant will eventually be honored with a statue outside Staples Center, and his former teammate Shaquille O'Neal has a suggestion on what it should look like.

In a recent episode of the Players' Tribune's "Text Message Talk Show" with Dorrell Wright, O'Neal said the statue should depict Bryant's game-winning pull-up jumper from the Los Angeles Lakers' 2006 first-round playoff series against the Phoenix Suns.

Bryant and the seventh-seeded Lakers went up 3-1 over the second-seeded Suns in that series before blowing their lead. O'Neal, who left the Lakers in 2004, won an NBA championship that season with the Miami Heat.

Lakers controlling owner and president Jeanie Buss stated in 2018 that Bryant would receive a statue outside Staples Center once he's inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Bryant is among the Hall's 2020 inductees, but the enshrinement celebrations were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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