Five-time NBA champion Kobe Bryant returned to practice on Sunday for the Los Angeles Lakers after sitting out for about a week and a half due to a lower leg contusion suffered in the preseason. Some of his younger teammates made things interesting for the veteran by talking some trash to the 37-year-old.
Apparently, Metta World Peace claims that those teammates talking trash to Kobe wasn’t the best idea. As usual, the trash talk fueled the fire for Bryant, via Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News.
“Somebody decided to talk to Kobe,” Lakers forward Metta World Peace said, laughing. “That was the wrong thing to do.”
World Peace didn’t want to disclose the names of the teammates that were bold enough to talk trash to the face of the franchise, via Medina.
“I’m not going to disclose any names because we’re a very confidential organization,” World Peace said, smiling. “But it wasn’t the right move. It was definitely not smart.”
Although World Peace wasn’t willing to mention which of his teammates were going back and forth with Kobe, Mike Bresnahan of the Los Angeles Times knew which players were taking jabs at Bryant during practices.
Turns out there were *two* players who fired up Kobe by talking trash to him at practice today: Lou Williams and, no surprise, Nick Young.
— Mike Bresnahan (@Mike_Bresnahan) October 25, 2015
It comes as no surprise Young would be one of the two players to talk some trash to Kobe. Young had a few battles in practice last year, but Williams being the other player is interesting.
Williams comes off as soft-spoken, but apparently, that may be far from the case. These teammates being bold enough to go head-to-head with Kobe could be a good sign of some healthy competition in practice.