How Kobe ghosting this MVP prevented his chance at an NBA Finals matchup with LeBron

Watching Kevin Garnett give commentary on Netflix’s hit basketball show Starting 5, it’s hard not to wish the series had been around back in Garnett’s heyday — following around players like him, Kobe Bryant, and well, young LeBron James.

It also brings to mind one of the biggest “what if”s in NBA history involving the three superstars.

Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett’s names were frequently linked in their playing days as the two primary faces of high school phenoms who successfully made the jump straight to the NBA, and paving the way for players like LeBron to do the same. But there’s another, much more direct way that Bryant and Garnett could have been connected — they were nearly teammates.

When Kevin Garnett decided he wanted out of Minnesota and was ready to force his hand at a trade in the 2007 offseason, the Boston Celtics weren’t the only team on his radar. Garnett’s top option was actually to be traded to the Lakers, and team up with Kobe, after the Lakers had chosen to stick with Bryant over Shaq in their infamous beef of the mid-2000s.

Garnett even called Kobe to discuss the possibility that summer. But Kobe never answered the call (as in, literally). As Michael Pina explained it in a GQ article back in 2021, “Bryant was touring China for Nike and, from Garnett’s point of view, couldn’t be bothered to discuss a future as teammates.”

What?! The potential pairing of KG and Kobe Bryant was denied because of a missed phone call?! Granted, the first iPhone had only come out like a month prior, so we weren’t all glued to our phones all the time at that point yet. But still, the idea that Garnett and Bryant could have played together if only for a bit more “Sliding Doors”-style fortuitous timing boggles the mind.

If you really think through how this impacted the course of NBA history, the ripple effects are staggering.

Kobe did eventually get a new All-Star big man to play with a year later when the Lakers traded for Pau Gasol, and they went on to win two NBA championships compared to the Celtics’ one with Garnett. So the fragile balance and rivalry of the two winningest pro franchises wasn’t too drastically altered by the ghosting.

But it did in effect prevent another pairing that NBA fans everywhere were clamoring for — Kobe Bryant versus LeBron James in the NBA Finals. It never happened throughout the intersection of their two illustrious careers. But if Kobe Bryant had answered his phone and encouraged Kevin Garnett to come to the Lakers instead of the Celtics, they almost certainly would have met up with LeBron James in the Finals at some point.

Very likely the 2007 Finals, and without KG in Boston, LeBron’s path to the Finals would have been a lot easier the following seasons as well.

Instead, we’re just left to wonder what could have been. So let the cautionary tale of Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and LeBron James be a reminder to rising basketball superstars everywhere — if a disgruntled NBA superstar in his prime calls your cell phone and you miss it, be sure to call him back, so as not to risk forever altering the course of NBA history.