Kobe Bryant spent his entire career with the Los Angeles Lakers, but twice came close to leaving the purple-and-gold franchise. For a period he wanted to leave and he could have joined the Chicago Bulls, or the Detroit Pistons. For the latter, it was in 2007 that it almost materialized. Joe Dumars, who was the GM of the Pistons at the time, returned to this aborted trade during The Crossover NBA podcast
“Mitch Kupchak and I discussed the parameters of the trade at length,” explained Joe Dumars. “That’s when Kobe said, ‘I want to go. The Lakers are not trying to win. I want to go. There were two teams that Mitch believed had enough of a deal to get Kobe back. It was us and Chicago. Mitch called and said, “Look, I’d like to work out a deal with you. That leaves us a few days to do it. And then we agreed on the deal.
At the time, Kobe was the only player to have a no-trade clause in his contract. So Mitch said, ‘Look, as you know, Joe, Kobe has a no-trade, so he has to approve this. But we’re going to offer it to him and I’m going to show it to Dr. Buss (owner).’ He did it. Dr. Buss said okay. They told Kobe about it, and Mitch told me that Kobe said, ‘I need 24 hours or 48 hours to discuss this with my family.’ Like: ‘Look, I need some time to discuss this with my family. And I think Dr. Buss said, ‘No, we need an answer by tomorrow.’ And Kobe didn’t want to be forced to make a decision so quickly.
And so Mitch explained to me that Dr. Buss had given him a day, and if the decision wasn’t made, Dr. Buss would end the deal. And Kobe refused to make a decision… There he was: ‘I need a few days to talk to my family and think about it.’ He hasn’t made a decision in 24 hours. And Dr. Buss said, ‘It’s over, I’m out of the deal. We tried to make a deal. You didn’t want to make a decision. We move on.’ And the trade was dead. And Mitch called me up and said, ‘Joe, we’re stepping down. Dr. Buss said no. He told Kobe, ‘If you don’t make a decision now, we’ll stop trying to trade you and we’ll move on.’ »
Dumars was confident he could recover the back
“I thought it was going to work,” Dumars said. “But here’s the thing about any trade or deal you make: the longer it takes, the more likely it won’t happen. So when it didn’t happen right away, and time started ticking, you know, in those 24 hours, I was like, ‘OK, this could go off the rails. But when we hung up and Mitch said to you, ‘OK, we have a deal.’ I said to myself: ‘it’s good, we have a deal.’ And I called Davidson (Bill Davidson, owner at the time). He called Dr. Buss, who said, ‘Look, we have a deal. The only problem is that Kobe has to approve it. You know, at that point, you’re like, ‘OK, it could be done.’ You see what I mean ? You’re not popping the champagne yet, you’re not saying anything. You don’t tell anyone else about it and wait to see how it pans out.