The pairing of Shaquille O\u2019Neal and Kobe Bryant was unstoppable<\/a>. The two all-time greats dominated every team they faced on a nightly basis.<\/p>\n But there were problems bubbling beneath the surface. Kobe and Shaq did not get along well<\/a> on the Lakers, which led to the latter\u2019s acrimonious exit from the team in 2004.<\/p>\n In a situation where the team\u2019s two top stars are feuding, there are bound to be sides formed in the locker room. And one former LA Lakers star says that is exactly what stopped their team from being the greatest dynasty ever.<\/p>\n Former LA Lakers trainer Gary Vitti spoke in an interview with Byron Scott<\/a> recently. When addressing the fallout between Kobe Bryant<\/a> and Shaquille O\u2019Neal<\/a>, Vitti provided an interesting perspective.<\/p>\n He believes that while the two stars could have handled their feud better, the rest of the Lakers locker room and management didn\u2019t help matters by picking sides.<\/p>\n \u201cA team is like a family. You may get mad at somebody in your family, you might get angry with your mom or your dad or your brother, or your sister. But you don\u2019t stop loving them, and that\u2019s the difference.<\/p>\n \u201cIn that era, we stopped loving each other, and when that happened, people started choosing sides.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s easy to blame Kobe. This really bothers me, because we should have won 10 championships. It\u2019s easy to blame Kobe, and it\u2019s easy to blame Shaq.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about the rest of us? Including me. There\u2019s other players, there\u2019s management, there\u2019s ownership, and coaches. People chose sides.\u201d<\/p>\n LA Lakers would have been unstoppable if feud was managed well<\/p>\n One of the NBA\u2019s biggest \u2018What If?\u2019 scenarios is Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O\u2019Neal staying on the Lakers past 2004.<\/p>\n Given the talent at hand, it\u2019s hard to imagine a world where the duo didn\u2019t go on to win more NBA championships together.<\/p>\n While Shaq hit his prime on the Lakers, Kobe\u2019s prime came years after the Diesel left the team. One can imagine Kobe would have easily been able to take a load off Shaq\u2019s shoulders as he grew older.<\/p>\n Add to that the success both stars experienced away from each other, winning three NBA championships and reaching four finals between 2005 to 2011 when Shaq retired, and it\u2019s almost a guarantee that they would have won at least one more title together.<\/p>\n While the pair couldn\u2019t resolve their issues during their careers, they did put the past behind them years down the line.<\/p>\n Prior to Bryant\u2019s unfortunate passing in 2020, he and O\u2019Neal shared a very close relationship. While we may never know how good they could have been, we got to see how great they were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The LA Lakers could have been the greatest dynasty ever with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O\u2019Neal, but something…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,13800,7232,590,14232,85,7897],"class_list":["post-63359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kobe-bryant","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-shaquille-oneal","tag-sports","tag-western-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Los](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-51600155-854x627.jpg\")
Photo credit should read LUCY NICHOLSON\/AFP via Getty ImagesShaquille O\u2019Neal and Kobe Bryant feud caused rift in the locker room<\/p>\n