It didn't take much for young Kobe Bryant to give you the mitts.
Standing in stark contrast to the poem-penning, sensei-meditating-amid-the-bamboo aura of Vino Bryant, the younger, dumber Kobe was just that—a kid out of high school who hadn't learned the finer points of conflict resolution.
Young Bryant had hair and ran and tangled with Reggie Miller and Chris Childs. He didn't have many damns to give in the first place, so if he believed you were trying him in any way, he'd take personal exception.
Which brings us to Samaki Walker, a former teammate of Bryant's on the championship-winning 2002 Lakers team. Walker's run with the Lakers was short and pedestrian, punctuated only by a ring and one weird incident that no one ever really got to the bottom of: the time Kobe punched him in the face.
The story didn't get much press at the time. Phil Jackson addressed it briefly as a sort of "boys will be boys" rumpus-room incident, but now Walker is filling in the gaps with his version of events.
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Article written by Dan Carson