The Brooklyn Nets have had plenty of great players play for the franchise whether the team has been playing in New Jersey or entertaining fans in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is currently in the midst of rebuilding the roster to be a playoff contender, there was one point when one of the greatest players in NBA history said that he would play for the Nets despite the team passing on him.

“Well, it’s pretty much my agent, Arn Tellem, just being Arn Tellem. I love to play so much, I would’ve played on Mars,” Kobe Bryant said back in the day after one of his interviews (h/t to NetsDaily’s Anthony Puccio) after playing against the Nets while the team was still in New Jersey. Many Nets fans are familiar with the story of the Nets passing on Bryant to take Kerry Kittles with the eighth overall pick.

“They didn’t draft me so I’m a Laker, but if they would’ve drafted me, I would’ve been playing for the Nets and we would’ve kicked the Lakers’ butt tonight,” Bryant continued. Bryant, who went on to five championships as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers seems like he would’ve played for any team, including the Nets, but the franchise passed on him in what in hindsight is regarded as one of the biggest misses in league history.

“We passed on Kobe in the 1996 Draft and I don’t want my good friend Kerry Kittles to be mad at me, but we passed on Kobe because we thought he was going to play in Italy,” former Nets assistant general manager Bobby Marks, now of ESPN, said on a segment on “NBA on ESPN.” The segment was dedicated to some of the biggest acquisitions in Lakers history and of course, Bryant had to be on that list.

Ultimately, the Nets chose to take Kittles in the 1996 Draft and he went on to be part of one of the most successful eras in Nets history, but he didn’t have the kind of career Bryant had. Either way, it’s always nice to reminisce on what could have been, especially when one of the greatest players in the history of basketball says that he would’ve played for your team and would’ve been happy to beat the Lakers.

The legacy of Kobe Bryant is so tightly linked to the Los Angeles Lakers that it’s nearly impossible to imagine him wearing any other jersey. But if the 1996 NBA Draft had unfolded just a little differently, we might be telling an entirely different story—one where Kobe Bryant suits up not in purple and gold, but in New Jersey Nets colors.

In recent years, former NBA executives and insiders have confirmed that the New Jersey Nets—who held the 8th overall pick in the 1996 Draft—were poised to select the 17-year-old phenom straight out of Lower Merion High School. The team had fallen in love with Kobe’s potential, especially then-assistant coach John Calipari, who had just taken over as head coach and GM. Calipari reportedly had strong interest in making Bryant the future of the franchise.

But things changed quickly behind the scenes.

According to multiple accounts, Kobe’s camp, led by his agent Arn Tellem and backed by his father Joe “Jellybean” Bryant, made it clear to several teams—including the Nets—that Bryant wouldn’t be thrilled to play for them. The campaign was simple: don’t draft Kobe, or he might go play in Italy instead. The Nets, spooked by the warnings and fearing Kobe wouldn’t report, pulled back.

That opened the door for a franchise-altering move.

The Charlotte Hornets selected Kobe at No. 13, but immediately traded him to the Lakers in a pre-arranged deal for veteran center Vlade Divac. The rest, as they say, is basketball history.

But what if the Nets had ignored the warnings?

At the time, the team was coming off a rough stretch and was desperate for a cornerstone player. Instead, they opted for Kerry Kittles, a solid guard from Villanova, while Kobe became a five-time NBA champion, 18-time All-Star, and a global icon in Los Angeles. Had he gone to New Jersey, Kobe’s path—and the Nets’ trajectory—might’ve been radically different.

It’s one of the NBA’s greatest “what if” moments:
What if Kobe Bryant had been the face of the New Jersey Nets?

Would he still have become an all-time great? Would he have stayed with the team long-term? Would the Nets have built around him the way the Lakers did? Would they have won titles in the early 2000s—not with Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin, but with a young Kobe leading the charge?

We’ll never know for sure. But one thing is certain:
The 1996 Draft wasn’t just the beginning of Kobe’s career—it was the sliding-door moment that defined two franchises forever.