Former NBA power forward Horace Grant is one of the luckier players the league has seen. He was drafted by the Chicago Bulls in 1987 when they had a young, high-flying superstar named Michael Jordan, and he won three straight championships with them in the early 1990s.
In 2000, he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers after they had won it all for the first time in the Shaquille O’Neal/Kobe Bryant era. Grant won a fourth ring during the 2000-01 season as part of a Lakers team that went 15-1 in the playoffs.
Grant made a recent appearance on the “Gimme the Hot Sauce Podcast” with former Bulls teammate Stacey King. During that appearance, he gave Bryant some major flowers and placed the late Hall of Famer right behind Jordan on his list of the greatest players ever.
“With all respect to LeBron and Kobe and many other players that you can argue as the G.O.A.T,” Horace Grant said. “But I’ve seen Kobe Bryant when Shaq will foul out, got in foul trouble. I thought I was looking at Michael Jordan, how he took over games, and led us to victory many times when Shaq was on the bench with foul trouble and what have you. But I would say, MJ 1 and Kobe 1A.”
Bryant’s accomplishments speak for themselves. He was the driving force behind five NBA championships for the Lakers, and even as a young player in the early 2000s alongside O’Neal, he played at a true superstar level, especially when it mattered most in the playoffs. After playing 20 seasons in the league, he retired as the all-time leading scorer among guards.
One could say that Bryant was a less physically gifted version of Jordan. He copied significant parts of Jordan’s game, and as Grant alluded to, some often felt that the two were almost clones of each other. In fact, at Bryant’s memorial following his tragic death in 2020, Jordan said that the “Black Mamba” was “like a little brother” to him.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Horace Grant: Kobe Bryant is ‘1A’ behind Michael Jordan for G.O.A.T.
Reporting by Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire / LeBron Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
