Lamar Odom when Heat traded him to Lakers in 2004: Play with Kobe Bryant? I couldn’t pass that up
Lamar Odom: I went to Miami one year and linked up with Kobe Bryant back with the Lakers in a trade. I could had avoided the trade honestly, I didn't have to go, but to go back to Los Angeles and be a Laker, and play with Kobe? I couldn't pass down on that.
Q. It seemed like it was a call from Kobe, that's the thing that really made the deal happen, made you go back over to the West Coast and become a Laker. Odom: Yeah.
I mean, I've known Kobe before he went to the NBA. We had the same kind of representatives from Adidas. He was Adidas before he was Nike.
And Kobe, if you knew him even in 12th grade or before he made it to the NBA, you knew it was something special about him. You know he wanted ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is to those NBA players out there. He wanted to be better than Michael Jordan.
And in some people's eyes, he almost came close. YouTube This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Lamar Odom when Heat traded him to Lakers in 2004: Play with Kobe Bryant? I couldn’t pass that up