How Vlade Divac almost stopped the Lakers' trade for Kobe Bryant
The Los Angeles Lakers' summer of 1996 is perhaps the greatest offseason in NBA history.
Los Angeles traded center Vlade Divac for the draft rights to shooting guard Kobe Bryant and used the subsequent cap space to make superstar center Shaquille O'Neal a lucrative offer he couldn't refuse. Boom. Contender formed. A three-peat beginning just four years later.
But a little-known fact about the deal for Bryant -- certainly one of the greatest trades of all-time -- is that Divac almost killed the deal.
Upon hearing that he was being traded to Charlotte, Divac decided to threaten to retire -- and actually meant it -- which would've nixed the trade, according to Yahoo Sports:
"My feelings were that I play basketball for fun. This is not fun," Divac recently told Yahoo Sports about the 1996 draft-day deal that sent him to the Charlotte Hornets in exchange for Bryant, who is expected to play his final game in Sacramento on Thursday. "If somebody asked before, 'Vlade, are you going to play basketball over there [in Charlotte]?' It's not going to happen. I talked to my wife and told her, 'Look, I'm going to retire.'
"It would have been so bad. I would have been the most hated guy in L.A."
Correction: Not just in L.A., but probably across the world. The Lakers have the NBA's most global fan base, with thousands of fans in every opposing NBA city and millions across the globe. Divac would've been unofficially banned from Los Angeles, but he would've felt the effects everywhere.
Not only would the Lakers not have been able to trade for Bryant, but they also wouldn't have been able to sign O'Neal, who was the best center in the league at that point.
Fortunately for Laker fans, Divac, who was in Europe when he found out about the trade, agreed to have a sit-down conversation with then-Lakers general manager Jerry West, who Divac was close with after being drafted by him in 1989. The "emotional" conversation, as Divac dubbed it, changed his mind, and then went on to change the course of history, giving us one of the greatest teams of all-time.
After 10 days of stalling, Divac agreed to the trade. Seven days later, the Lakers signed O'Neal. Four years later, they won their first championship. And then another one. And then another.
Divac ended up enjoying his two seasons in Charlotte more than he expected before signing with the Sacramento Kings in 1998 (forming a historically entertaining team). The Kings and Lakers famously clashed in the 2002 Western Conference Finals, with the Lakers winning the ever-controversial series in seven games.
In an ironic twist, Divac joined the Lakers in 2004-05, his final season in the NBA, and got to play one season with Bryant on the post-Shaq Lakers. Divac said the pair joked about the trade occasionally.
Divac says has no hard feelings about how things turned out. Even though he never won a championship, it's not as if he was going to win one without another star or two like Bryant and O'Neal. He understands the magnitude of such a trade, which he calls the greatest in history:
"That was the best deal in NBA history," Divac told Yahoo Sports. "You got Vlade there in Charlotte and then you were able to sign Shaq because you cleared the salary cap and you got Kobe."