“They don’t have to be best friends” – When Magic stepped in when Kobe and Shaq’s feud nearly derailed the season originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Tensions heated up between Los Angeles Lakers legends Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal near the midway mark of the 2000-01 season. Analysts assumed that relations between the two stars would smooth out after they won the 2000 NBA Championship.
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Still, the ring and the glory seemed to have aggravated things.
Lakers need Magic
Aware of the duo’s massive potential, the Lakers called Magic Johnson to talk to the two basketball titans. The organization was hoping Magic could use his experience with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to improve Shaq and Kobe’s off-court chemistry.
After his separate conversations with O’Neal and Bryant, Johnson alleviated media concerns surrounding the two stars. Magic emphasized that their main goal is to win championships and noted that a fine line can be drawn between their personal and professional lives.
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“I just wanted to say, ‘Hey, this is about winning. That’s what this is about. It’s about going out there and playing together and winning,'” Johnson said in 1991, via the Los Angeles Times. “These guys are professional. You’ve got two of the best players in this league. They’ll find a way of working it out. They don’t have to be best friends off the court. But they have to play like they’re best friends when they’re on the court. The other players feed off of them on this team.”
Showtime Lakers
Johnson understood the possible roots of the feud. O’Neal won the NBA MVP the previous season and was considered the best player in the world. It was inevitable that Kobe wanted to achieve similar success and a bigger role in L.A.’s offense.
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Johnson recalled his experience with the Showtime Lakers, particularly when the team transitioned to his leadership from Kareem’s.
“But, you know, sometimes things take a while to adjust. It’s just like when Coach [Pat] Riley said, ‘It’s your team now.’ I’m sure it took Kareem a while to adjust to it being my team, and that I was going to take more shots than I was before,” Magic said.
“I’m not worried about it,” he continued. “That’s my take on it. I’m not really surprised by anything that happens in basketball, because I was once in this similar situation, in a sense, with Kareem. So, we’ll weather this storm and keep going. We’re two games out of having the best record in the NBA. You know, we can’t lose sight of that.”
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Johnson’s assurance somehow diminished the media’s and Lakers fans’ doubts. But it was still a matter of wait-and-see. Egos could blow the chemistry they’ve been building out of proportion, and people had every right to be concerned.
But as the season continued, fans saw the fruits of Magic’s labor. If Kobe and Shaq had tensions off the court, it wouldn’t have happened in the on-court performance. The duo powered the Lakers to an impressive 56-26 record in the 2000-01 season.
And in the postseason, they stomped all over their first three opponents through a series of sweeps. Surprisingly, they dropped the first game of the 2001 NBA Finals thanks to a 48-point explosion by Allen Iverson. But when the hype withered and the team figured out how to beat Philly, they crushed them in five games to become NBA Champions for a second year in a row.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jul 15, 2025, where it first appeared.