Rajon Rondo has great reason why he’s pals with Kobe Bryant
Kobe Bryant may have sat out Tuesday night’s tilt between his Los Angeles Lakers squad and the visiting Sacramento Kings at Staples Center, but that didn’t stop Rajon Rondo spending some time discussing his friendship with the retiring icon.
Strangely — or perhaps not — the best memory Rondo could conjure up involving his buddy concerned when he and Bryant nearly came to blows during a 2009 game between the Lakers and Rondo’s team at the time, the Boston Celtics.
.@RajonRondo’s memory of @kobebryant? When Kobe pointed at him. "He pissed me off a little bit when he did that." pic.twitter.com/BB48SULKXP
— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) March 16, 2016
The two superstar nevertheless forged a friendship despite both having fiery personalities one could reasonably suspect to provide for a combustible relationship.
“We get along extremely well,” Bryant said of Rondo in 2015 when he was trying to recruit the point guard to the Lakers, via ESPN. “We see the game in a similar fashion in terms of our aggressiveness and mindset.”
Following the Kings’ 106-98 win Tuesday, Rondo provided an interesting explanation as to why he became friends with Bryant.
Rondo and Kobe grew close. Why? Rondo: "I don’t have a lot of friends. I’m just friends with a lot of a–holes."
— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) March 16, 2016
Given Bryant’s interesting thoughts on friendship, perhaps Rondo’s characterization of his pal is indeed accurate, not to mention illustrate why two such mercurial personalities hit it off in the first place.