When talking about basketball legends, Kobe Bryant is always part of the conversation. The Black Mamba was the game in the years he played. Bryant has NBA championships, 18 All-Star selections, two Olympic gold medals, and a legacy that lives beyond the hardwood. He spent his entire 20-year NBA career as a Laker.
What Were The Two College Programs Kobe Bryant Had in Mind?
Bryant was drafted straight from Lower Merion High School and became one of the most respected guards in the NBA. However, this also meant that Bryant never played in March Madness. Still, he did think about it and had two programs in mind. What if history had taken a different turn?
Kobe Bryant senior year high school stats :
30.8 PPG
12.0 RPG
6.5 APG
4.0 SPG
3.8 BPGCOLD BLOODED ASSASSIN 🥶
— 8/24𝕄𝕒𝕞𝕓𝕒-𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣🐍 (@8_24Mamba4Ever) September 29, 2024
Well, if it had, Bryant would have played for one of the two best college programs. During an interview with the Knuckleheads Podcast, Bryant went on to reveal the colleges he had in mind. When asked where he would’ve gone if college had been part of his journey, without thinking twice, he said, Duke or North Carolina. The two blue bloods of college basketball.
Bryant explained his fascination with Duke stemmed from Coach K’s more modern, free-flowing offence. At the time, Grant Hill was making noise under Coach K, and Duke’s style looked like it was made for someone like Kobe Bryant. “He’s kinda ahead of his time in how he was running the game in Duke with a spread offense and saying he wanna do the same thing with me,” Kobe recalled.
But then, there was North Carolina and the structural lure. Dean Smith ran a tight system, one built for training raw talent. “Fundamentally sound and ready for NBA basketball,” Kobe said of Smith’s players. And the competition sure caught his eye. The Tar Heels had a roster with names like Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, and Rasheed Wallace. Kobe, however, didn’t want the easy road.
“I wanna play against [Vince Carter] every day because I want to get better,” he told Jimmy Kimmel in 2013. If history took a different turn, the world might have seen UNC practices where Kobe Bryant went up against Carter. And considering the Tar Heels reached back-to-back Final Fours in ’97 and ’98, adding Bryant might’ve meant a couple more banners in Chapel Hill.
But Duke wasn’t giving up so easily. Even when Dean Smith bowed out of the recruiting race, believing that Bryant was NBA-bound, Coach K kept calling. And years later, Kobe admitted to Duke.com that the idea of playing in front of the Cameron Crazies gave him chills.
As Kobe Bryant himself puts it, “Every time I turn on the TV and see Cameron Indoor Stadium, see everybody in Krzyzewskiville, and see the Crazies jumping up in down with the intensity and the building almost shaking, I wonder what it would have been like to play there.” With Elton Brand and Corey Maggette joining shortly after, that Duke team could’ve been a powerhouse with Kobe leading the charge.
Yet, despite it all, Bryant went with his gut. No college detour, just a straight sprint to the NBA. Drafted 13th overall by the Hornets and immediately traded to the Lakers, he walked into a scrimmage against the ex-Lakers. The rest, as they say, is basketball history.
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But it’s hard not to wonder, what if? What if the Mamba donned Duke blue or UNC white and Carolina blue? The world will never have answers to these questions, but it is safe to say, if Kobe Bryant had played, it would have been one hell of a March Madness.
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