Kobe Bryant Sounds Delusional With These Comments About Tim Duncan

The Lakers and Spurs meet tonight in Los Angeles. Naturally the biggest storyline revolves around Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan, who are playing each other for the 78th time. To the extent the end of their careers contribute to their respective legacies, Duncan is playing on the defending champions while Kobe is toiling away on a Lakers team that’s started off 1-7.

“I can’t express to you how much I’m jealous,” said Bryant of the Spurs’ sustained success, via Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News. “I’ve been up and down.”

It’s not as though the Lakers could’ve waved a magic wand and been as good as San Antonio had Kobe given the team a discount akin to what Duncan gave the Spurs — Kobe’s making $23.5 million this season while Duncan’s taking home $10.4 million — but money is fungible in a capped league and the Lakers could certainly be better if they had $13 million extra lying around to deploy elsewhere.

Kobe spoke specifically about the contract differences with USA Today’s Sam Amick:

Kobe’s right that he has lacked some of those stability advantages that Duncan has been fortunate to enjoy, but it’s not as though that happened with a vacuum. Might Shaq and Phil Jackson have stuck around and prolonged the Lakers’ championship window if Kobe had been, um, easier to deal with? Could he have taken a different tack to try to get the best out of Dwight Howard?

[H/T PBT]