The math was, shall we say, daunting for Kobe Bryant’s first coach with the Los Angeles Lakers. Del Harris had a veteran team with two future All-Stars in his backcourt even before Bryant arrived in the summer of 1996.

Harris’s priority was thus ensuring that those two star guards, Nick Van Exel and Eddie Jones, had the room to orbit comfortably around the Lakers’ other marquee newcomer entering the 1996-97 season: Shaquille O’Neal. As supremely skilled as Bryant was for his age, Harris and the Lakers’ general manager, Jerry West, agreed that finding minutes for the impatient teenager would be best done gradually.

Bryant, of course, did not agree with that plan. He wanted to start immediately and was not dissuaded by the injury that knocked him out of his entire first training camp and preseason as a pro.

“In his exuberance to play, he couldn’t wait for camp to start and broke his hand playing pickup ball at Venice Beach,” Harris said. “He was so hungry that he would go and find places to play and work on his own.