Laker Nation

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Happy “Regularly-Scheduled-NBA-Season-Eve” Laker Nation!

Here in internet-land, it’s been a day overflowing with feuds. Most obviously, we have the on-going lockout feud, where both the owners and players would rather lose $400 million than concede about half of that (which, of course, makes no sense).

Next up, and threatening to blow up the internet this morning, we have the Kardashian feud, where Kim, a sex-tape diva (and the artist responsible for recording the worst song of all time) filed for divorce from Kris, a mediocre NBA player for the lowly New Jersey Nets.

Wait… why do we care about this again?

Finally, we have the resurfacing of the Shaq vs. Kobe feud, an almost decade-long quarrel that ripped apart one of the greatest duos in NBA history. In Shaq’s new autobiography, Shaq Uncut: My Story, the Diesel shares his take on the feud, how it all got started and, well, quite a bit more:

On how the feud began:

“Kobe runs right out to Jim Gray and does this interview where he lets me have it. He said I was fat and out of shape. He said I was milking my toe injury for more time off, and the injury wasn’t even that serious. (Yeah, right. It only ended my damn career.) He said I was “lobbying for a contract extension when we have two Hall of Famers playing pretty much for free.” I’m sitting there watching this interview and I’m gonna explode. Hours earlier we had just promised our coach we’d stop. It was a truce broken. I let the guys know, “I’m going to kill him.”

On Kobe confronting him about Colorado:

Kobe stands up and goes face-to-face with me and says, “You always said you’re my big brother, you’d do anything for me, and then this Colorado thing happens and you never even called me.” I did call him. … So here we are now, and we find out he really was hurt that we didn’t stand behind him. That was something new. I didn’t think he gave a rat’s ass about us either way. “Well, I thought you’d publicly support me, at least,” Kobe said. “You’re supposed to be my friend.”

On Shaq’s threat to ‘Kill Kobe’:

Brian Shaw chimed in with “Kobe, why would you think that? Shaq had all these parties and you never showed up for any of them. We invited you to dinner on the road and you didn’t come. Shaq invited you to his wedding and you weren’t there. Then you got married and didn’t invite any of us. And now you are in the middle of this problem, this sensitive situation, and now you want all of us to step up for you. We don’t even know you.” Everyone was starting to calm down when I told Kobe, “If you ever say anything like what you said to Jim Gray ever again, I will kill you.”

For more on the story, check out this write up from Deadspin. Shaq’s autobiography, Shaq Uncut: My Story, is set to release on November 15th.