The stories about Kobe Bryant‘s maniacal work ethic are mythical. And on the flip side, Shaquille O’Neal‘s nonchalant attitude toward practice is also well-documented. The two former teammates butted heads over their different training philosophies, and the former often accused the latter of being lazy. However, in an interview with GQ Magazine in 2015, Bryant was more sympathetic towards O’Neal’s disdain for practice.

“I think what happened is that, as you get older, your body starts breaking down, and you have to really love the process in order to get through that.”

Bryant was in the penultimate season of his career and understood the challenges O’Neal faced toward the end of their run as teammates.

“Right now, I hurt. My ankle joints, my knee joints. My back. My thighs are sore. But for him, with his big toe and his knee, it became very hard for him to get up in the morning and push through those things. He might not have been as willing to do those things at the time, and I wasn’t thrilled about that.”

Bryant added that O’Neal was a beast, and he learned a lot from the Hall of Famer during their three title-winning seasons together. While he claimed he was willing to put in the work his teammate wasn’t, he quickly understood the human body’s limitations and announced his retirement nine months after this interview.

Bryant retired at the end of the 2015-16 season. O’Neal was in attendance during the final game of his career against the Utah Jazz. He challenged his former teammate to score 50 points.

As a final act of defiance, Bryant exceeded O’Neal’s expectations and scored 60 points.

Kobe Bryant claimed he and Shaquille O’Neal could’ve won 12 rings together

Despite their enviable success as teammates, Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal stopped seeing eye-to-eye in their final years as teammates and forced the Los Angeles Lakers to choose between one of the two. The franchise chose the young guard over the ageing veteran and traded the three-time Finals MVP to the Miami Heat in 2004.

During an interview with Valuentertainment in 2019, host Patrick Bet-David asked Bryant how different would O’Neal’s career have been had he taken fitness and practice as seriously as he did. Bryant candidly replied,

“He’d be the greatest of all time. He’d be the first to tell you that, for sure. This guy was a force like I have never seen. It was crazy…. I wish he was in the gym. I would’ve had f**ing (expletive) 12 rings. My God, yeah. Wouldn’t even be close.”

Bryant explained that O’Neal was one of the few centers who used his size to overwhelm the opponents. He wanted to dominate the paint and was an intimidating force on the basketball court.

O’Neal responded to Bryant’s comments on an Instagram post, writing,

“You woulda had twelve if u passed the ball more especially in the Finals against the Pistons #facts. You don’t get statues by not working hard.”

The comment sparked rumours that the duo had reignited their beef. However, Bryant quickly shut down those rumors with a post on X, formerly called Twitter, and O’Neal concurred while taking a jibe at Dwight Howard.

O’Neal and Bryant’s incredible run together yielded three titles. However, they both know it could’ve been more had they kept their differences aside and embraced each other’s quirks rather than wanting the other to change to suit their philosophy.