Check this out: It's another steamy day of June in 2016. The streets of Newark are completely empty at lunchtime. Most people are glued to the TV to watch a live news conference held inside the city's downtown basketball arena.
With the quick clickclick of the shutter from the photographers' cameras, he walks away with his familiar swagger-filled strut. Dressed in a luxurious gray suit, he is accompanied by his wife Vanessa, their children and family.
After 20 seasons and arguably the greatest basketball career of all time in the New York metropolitan area, Kobe Bryant is ready to announce his retirement as the greatest New Jersey Nets ever.
With his former coaches John Calipari and Phil Jackson, and former teammates like Jayson Williams, Sam Cassell, Kendall Gill, and Shaquille O'Neal in attendance - well, maybe not Shaq - in attendance, Bryant scored a Derek Jeteresque run down the championship completed. Banner he brought to an arena he helped build in downtown Newark.
sound crazy? Sure, but what if the New Jersey Nets had just stuck with their gut and selected the eighth high school kid from Lower Merion (PA) High School instead of Kerry Kittles of Villanova in the 1996 NBA Draft?
This is one of the great what-ifs in NBA history. The fortunes of one of the most star-crossed franchises in sports could have changed overnight.
Net from 2001 to '08, says Jason Kidd, "it changed the landscape of basketball." "It would have made New Jersey an attractive place, a basketball hotbed with that kind of player. When you have a player like Kobe Bryant and what he can do, he's definitely got talent."
"And maybe Shaq would have been one of those pieces."
It was June 1996 and the number 1 song in the country was "Tha Crossroads" by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Incidentally, the Nets found themselves at their own crossroads.
Calipari faced a dilemma as he entered his first NBA draft after being hired by the owners of the Nets, known by many as the "Sequoia Seven". The prospect of a high school named former UMass head coach Kobe Bryant had not been overlooked. The Nets had worked on Bryant three times, and each time the high school guard praised the Nets' management.
During a workout at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Bryant was pitted against two Nets players – Ed O'Bannon and Khalid Reeves. O'Bannon was the team's ninth overall pick in 1995 after a decorated college career that included a national championship, the Final Four Most Outstanding Player Award and the John Wooden Award.
And yet, 17-year-old Bryant constantly attacked O'Bannon during the workout.
"If you watch the workouts," Calipari told ESPN's Ian O'Connor in 2011, "you'd say that either this kid taught us to be stupid in these workouts or he's ridiculous."
The team's general manager, John Nash, had deep ties to Philadelphia and knew all about the high school incident that was creating buzz throughout Philadelphia basketball circles.
Nash talks weekly with former NBA player John Lucas, who oversaw some basketball workouts at the Sporting Club in Bellevue, Philadelphia, where pros like Jerry Stackhouse worked out.
"I called John Lucas once a week and asked how his people were doing," Nash recalled. "[Once] I said, 'What about the stack?' Lucas said, 'Well, he's the second best 2-guard in the gym.' So I asked who's the best because I'm trying to figure out in my mind which is [better than the heap]. 'Oh, Kobe kicks his ass every day,' Lucas says.
"The legend of Kobe was very vivid in my mind."
On the night before the draft, Net Management entertained Bryant's parents, Joe and Pam, in Secaucus, N.J. in Radisson, where Calipari had a temporary residence on the top floor in the presidential suite. It looked like everyone was on board with Bryant becoming Calipari's first NBA draft pick.
"We were ready to take on Kobe," said Joe Taub, one of the Nets' primary owners. "But then a lot of things happened with management and the agent and things changed that [draft] night."
Things changed rapidly in the hours before the draft and there was no smell in the nets. As a Lakers fan growing up, Bryant wanted to be a Laker — and he knew there was a good chance it would happen. A smoked Jerry West began planning to land Bryant for the 13th pick with a deal involving Vlade Divac to Charlotte.
The teams between the Nets and Hornets – Dallas, Indiana, Golden State and Cleveland – had no interest in Bryant and would draft all the big guys.
The Lakers needed Bryant to convince Calipari and the Nets that the high schooler would not play for the Nets under any circumstances. According to Nash, Bryant's camp called him and Calipari and said he would not play for the Nets. Italy was mentioned playing overseas, although Nash said he never bought it. However, there were other factors conspiring against the Nets as well.
"[Adidas sneaker maven] Sonny Vaccaro [since there was an influence] at the time, Kobe was going to wear Adidas and he was going to make more money in LA than he was going to make in New Jersey," Nash said. "A Lakers Adidas contract was worth a lot more than a Jersey Adidas contract. There were too many variables.
"Arn Tellem was involved and very close to the Lakers," Nash continued. "Arn was a friend of mine too. We had a bit of a fight after that because he and Kobe had misrepresented what was going on. But he did what he had to do. He did. Hoaxed and won. It was all a hoax."
In his first major decision, Calipari was feeling pressure from everywhere. Taub wanted a short forward like Syracuse's John Wallace to come and play immediately. Super agent David Faulk asked Calipari to take a safer option in the Kittels, who had played for four full years at Villanova.
In the end, Calipari didn't want to start his pro coaching career with the risk of making a potentially embarrassing choice and taking on a high school kid who apparently didn't want to live in New Jersey.
"Everybody knows I was talked about," Calipari told O'Connor. “But let me say, the opportunity to coach Kerry Kittles, I will not give up on anything. I love Kerry Kittles, and I said at the time that he would be better than Kobe in these first few years , but in five years Kobe is going to be off the charts."
Of course, six years into his career, Bryant won his third championship at Kitsch's expense when the Lakers won the Nets led by Kidd in the final.
The butterfly effect, a term coined by the late mathematician and MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz after whom the 2004 motion picture was named, is based on the assumption that "a small disturbance such as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can produce enormous consequences." is."
So what if Calipari listened to Nash and bluffed?
"The kid tricked everyone," Williams laughs. "He bluffed and we didn't say it. He was one of the greatest players of all time. But we found an outstanding player in Kerry."
Bryant as the Nets would have sent massive waves across the NBA universe and drastically changed the careers and destinies of some of the biggest figures in the game, from Bryant to West to Calipari to Kidd to Shake.
"It changed the course of NBA history, it's that simple," said Yes Network's Ian Eagle, the Nets' voice for the past 22 seasons. "It would have been one of the most intense domino effects the league has ever seen. For Kobe to be in the New York area, with a team that thirsted for respect and credibility, it was exactly what the franchise needed."
Consider some permutations:
• If Kobe had become the Net, it might have wiped out the Lakers' 2000 lineage and five championships, including their three-peat.
• Does Shaq spend eight of his most successful seasons in Los Angeles with the Lakers?
• Did Jackson ever coach the Lakers? Or would he have coached the Nets, with whom he flirted about a job in 1999?
"[Nets ownership] captured my imagination with it, but Jason Williams was down with a seriously fractured leg," Jackson said before the 2002 NBA Finals between the Lakers and Nets. "He was a $90 million player. A lot of things were happening; Stephen [Marbury] had just been traded for. [But] I believe he had a vision."
• With Kobe, the Nets probably successfully negotiated a beautiful basketball arena in Newark under the ownership group of Lewis Katz and Raymond Chambers, and were never sold and relocated to Brooklyn.
• If the Nets had made Newark their new home, Shaq might have returned to the place where he was born along with Kobe and some of Phil's confidants.
"It's interesting to think about," says current Nets center Brooke Lopez, who grew up a Lakers fan. "The Shaqs are from Newark, there are a lot of interesting variables. It will be a very different league. Can you imagine Kobe going through his 20th season here?
"Very different. But would Phil have to come out here? With a triangle offense for the Nets?"
The alternate realities are endless. Triangle crime won't just happen in New York, it will happen in New Jersey. In the post-Patrick Ewing era, a superstar talent like Bryant could help the Nets own the rival Knicks.
"It's always been a struggle for the Nets [in the field]," Eagle said. “Kobe Bryant is an outstanding player. Think of a generation of basketball fans who grew up watching Kobe Bryant play in the New Jersey area.
"That was a time when the Nets could build some traction in the market - the end of the Pat Riley Knicks. That was the take."
• Do the Nets still have the seventh pick in 1997 and be able to trade it to Keith Van Horn's package?
• Has Stephen Marbury still become a trap in a business in 1999? Does Calipari still get fired some games after that trade? And if there is no Marbury, Williams would never have broken his leg (Marbury rolled into Williams' leg), which effectively ended his career.
"If it was going to be in that situation, s---, maybe we should have taken Kobe on," laughs Williams.
• And there's probably no Kid and no Rod Thorne - the architects of the Nets teams that scored one final after another.
However, most question that as a net, Bryant would have fulfilled his immense potential despite New Jersey's dismal past with young talents like Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson.
"Yeah, no problem," says Kidd, who fully understood the challenges of being successful in New Jersey. "He is what [Kobe] is. He is one of the best ever."
Williams says Bryant's relentless desire to win and supreme belief in his own talent have either turned or derailed the Nets.
"I practiced with Michael Jordan during the 1998 All-Star Game," Williams said. "And Jordan will kill you because you're not working hard enough. Everything I see with Kobe is one of those guys who comes in and plays hard [like Jordan] ... Got a different kind of mindset."
Williams and a few others wonder how Bryant might fit in with the Nets as a teen. The Nets began the 1996–97 season with Robert Pack, O'Bannon, Gill, Williams and Sean Bradley.
By the trade deadline, the Nets struck a deal with Dallas to acquire Cassell, Chris Gatling, Jim Jackson, George McCloud and Eric Montrose for Bradley, O'Bannon, Pack and Reeves.
The Nets won only 26 games that season. The Kittels averaged 16.4 points while Bryant averaged only 15.5 minutes and 7.6 points as a rookie with the Lakers.
ESPN Insider's Bradford Doolittle reconfigured the NBA roster to keep Bryant on the Nets for his first two seasons and re-run the schedule using a historic simulator created by Dave Koch Sports. According to the simulator, the 1996–97 Nets would have ended in 19–63 with Bryant averaging 7.6 points in 15.7 minutes. The Kittles scored 12.1 points per game for the Lakers in the simulator, ending 53–29 with a first-round playoff series loss to Minnesota.
The following season, the Nets were selected seventh in the draft, but traded the rights to Tim Thomas with Jackson, Montrose and Anthony Parker in a deal for second overall pick Van Horn.
Nash says he thinks the Nets would have won more with Bryant in the first season and probably ended up with fewer picks and weren't able to trade for Van Horn. If the Nets had finished with the ninth pick overall in 1997, another prep prospect named Tracy McGrady was selected by Toronto that year.
"A year later [after Bryant moved on], we brought on McGrady," said former Nets executive Bobby Marks. "Tracy was good. But he wasn't even close to [Kobe's] level at that age. He was very respectable but even at 18-19 years old he had that kind of killer instinct."
For the sake of this exercise, let's assume the trap still ends with Van Horn. Along with the Kittels and Van Horn, the Nets won 43 games that season and made the playoffs, before being swept by Jordan and the Bulls in the first round.
Imagine what a Bryant vs Jordan first round series would have been like.
And how good would the Nets have been with Bryant, Cassell, Williams, Van Horn and Gill? Dolittle's emulation was the performer who went 45–37 in 1997–98 and lost to Charlotte in the first round averaging 25.3 points in playoff games with Bryant before taking fifth seed. The Lakers won 66 games with the Kittles as the sixth man in the simulator.
"I think [Kobe's] talent must have been there right from the start because it was in L.A.," Nash said. "I think it enabled us to hook our wagon to a young man who was going to be a real All-Star for a significant period of time, probably the best player in the league."
Certainly, the Nets weren't the most stable organization. Fans of the franchise felt cursed by dire fates such as the 1993 death of Draen Petrovic and Williams' amputated leg.
Bryant will certainly have to overcome the obstacles that come with playing for a losing franchise that the Lakers didn't have.
"At the time, New Jersey, there was a tremendous inferiority complex throughout the organization," Nash said. "And there was the fear that you're going to take this high school kid, develop him, he's going to be a really good player and then a free agent and he doesn't want to sign again and wants to leave." I found that very, very disappointing.
"What could have happened was that Kobe could have been very dissatisfied and frustrated and might have gotten angry. And he probably wouldn't have thrived in New Jersey."
The Nets would have Bryant under his rookie contract for three seasons before free agency. Maybe Bryant just leaves or demands a trade at some point. And what about Calipari? As a youth coach, Calipari's style didn't always match that of the Giants. And he was brutal on Kittles.
“Once Calipari yelled at [Kerry] so much that he [slipped and] fell,” Williams said. "During a timeout [Calipari] Kerry walked upstairs screaming! You're going to give me a f---ing aneurysm. I'll never forget it. We were busting our ass in the garden."
While the shouting only escalated in New Jersey, Williams saw Bryant blossom in Los Angeles.
Williams said, "Once you saw Kobe after 40 games, people were like holy... This guy's going to be a superstar. Cal was under tremendous pressure." "I feel bad because a lot of people define Kerry on that pick.
"If you look at Carey's time with the Nets, he was a great player. But who would have thought Kobe would be the second best player in the world?"
By 1999, Calipari had been fired after a 3–17 start. The new ownership group, led by Katz and Chambers, wanted to win. He traded for Marbury and had an eye on the creation of the Newark area.
That ownership group also had an artist-rendered vision reel in 1998 to promote the move by politicians and sponsors and to build support for a new field. The video was of NBC's opening that would have been completed with NBC's NBA jingle at the 2002 NBA Finals, and it hyped the future final between Bryant and the O'Neill Lakers and the New Jersey Nets "in Downtown Newark". That duel would actually be played four years later, but at East Rutherford. There were too many political road blocks that prevented the Nets from getting their basketball field in Newark and eventually forced them to sell Katz and Chambers, which later led the team to move to Brooklyn.
However, a talent like Bryant might have made the difference.
"They probably would have never sold and they probably would have flourished in a new building in downtown Newark with a drawing point," Marks says. "I don't think you'd ever have to move because [Kobe] would have been such a drawing card."
Unlike the run-and-gun kid teams of the early 2000s that played the night before the nearly empty Continental Airlines Arena, Bryant would have probably been a box-office draw.
Kidd says he believes Bryant may have attracted major talent to New Jersey, perhaps even himself.
"With that type of player," Kidd says, "he's a once in a lifetime person."
"Mars, Jupiter, New Jersey. ... doesn't matter"
Five years after Bryant's passing over the Nets, the Lakers All-Star reminded him of what could have happened during a spectacular duel with Marbury at the Continental Airlines Arena on February 13, 2001.
Marbury delivered one of his best games as a net, blasting for 50 points and 12 assists. But Bryant had the last laugh, scoring 3 points with 4.8 seconds to play in overtime to defeat the Nets and their former Lakers mentor, head coach Byron Scott.
In a post-game interview, Bryant was asked if he would have played for the Nets if drafted by New Jersey.
"What I remember is [Kobe] said 'exactly,' and then smiled with that big million-dollar smile and said something to the effect that [the Nets would have been] cool, and wouldn't be like it is now. [in New Jersey]," Eagle said.
By 2002, Bryant added his third championship at the Nets' expense. Before the final began, Bryant was asked about consolidating the Nets on draft night.
"Arn Tellem had something to do with it," Bryant explained on the eve of the 2002 NBA Finals. "I don't know how much a 17-year-old can benefit.
"At that point I was ready to play anywhere — Mars, Jupiter, New Jersey, Charlotte, no matter what."
For ex-owner Taub, there's no looking back.
"It is easy to be a Monday morning quarterback," Taub said. "Kobe could have broken a leg. So many things happen that are speculative. From a management point of view, you could judge it every way you want.
"We decided to go the other way for better or worse [and] he turns out to be this great player. One of the greatest."