One of the great NBA disappointments is that we never got to see LeBron James and Kobe Bryant face off in a playoff series. It only could’ve happened in the Finals. By the time James got to the Western Conference, it was to replace the retired Bryant as the star of the Lakers.
But their legacies circled one another as probably the world’s two best players for at least a half decade, and 2008 was right in the middle of that period. That’s when LeBron and Kobe joined forces as the alphas of USA Basketball, anchoring the “Redeem Team” that was assembled to set the global-basketball-supremacy record straight after the U.S. left the 2004 Olympics in Greece with an embarrassing bronze medal.
What made the LeBron-Kobe union so interesting, and potentially so flammable, was the dichotomy between their styles of play. LeBron has always operated as part of a team. The best part, but a part nonetheless. Kobe often…
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