Olden Polynice played 15 years in the NBA, bouncing around to five different teams and one of his more memorable stories happened with Kobe Bryant and Shaquille (Shaq) O’Neal.
“So, we’re at Southwest College, right, playing,” Polynice said on Byron Scott’s Fast Break recently. “I’m trying to get — I’m a Laker fan. I wanna be on the Lakers. I gotta be around the Lakers. So, I’m working — we working out. I’m guarding Shaq, blah, blah, blah. Basket, ‘Yeah, this is my team, motherf—–.’ Basket down there, ‘Yeah, naw, naw, this is my team.’”
It started like standard trash talk, but then it escalated.
“It’s going back and forth between the two of ’em,” Polynice said. “Okay, no problem. I mean, that’s us. We’re ballers. Mitch Kupchak’s sitting over there chilling with Laker brass, and all of a sudden, there’s a dead ball.
“They just going back and forth, but I’m thinking it’s still part of the crap that we do. ‘Nah, motherf—–, I’ll kick your —.’ I’m like, ‘Oh s—, okay. Are they about to fight?’”
That’s when things got serious. Polynice said O’Neal wound up to swing at Kobe and he stepped in, shoving Bryant out of the way to take the hit himself.
Shaq has admitted to purposefully pushing Kobe’s buttons and recently recalled when he spoke to coach Phil Jackson about Kobe being so fired up all time during games.
“Phil treated you like a man,” Shaq said on the Kelce brothers’ New Heights podcast. “I used to go to Phil’s and like, ‘Hey, man, you better get this little MFer. Phil was like, ‘No.’ Why? He’s like, ‘I always want him to have that aggression. Phil was one of those smooth-talk guys, and he never raised his voice. The way he explained, he’s like, ‘If we take his aggression, we’ll ruin him, and you’re gonna need him down the stretch. Just work through it.'”
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