Kobe Bryant tried to sow 'seeds of dissent' between Westbrook & Durant in 2012: Report

Basketball legend Kobe Bryant made his name in the NBA for his competitive spirit, commonly recognised as his 'Mamba mentality.' During his heyday, Bryant was well-known for his trash talk during games, where he frequently tried to get into the heads of his opponents to gain a tactical advantage. While his on-court trash talks are pretty noteworthy, the late Los Angeles Lakers reportedly tried to sow a seed of dissent between Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant back in 2012.

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Westbrook and KD: When Kobe tried to sow a seed of dissent between the OKC duo

ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski revealed in his recent podcast that Kobe Bryant tried to instigate a clash between the-then OKC Thunder duo, Westbrook and Durant, by urging the former that he should be the one winning scoring titles over his Thunder teammate. This is during the 2012 London Olympics, the season after Kobe and the Lakers were knocked out by Thunder in the second round of the NBA playoffs. Kevin Durant became the scoring champion after finishing the regular season with an average of 28 points per game. 

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"In 2012, what I remember with Kobe was he spent a lot of the – or he spent some of that – Olympics with Russell Westbrook telling Russ, "You know, you should be winning scoring titles. I don't know why you're letting Kevin win scoring titles. You should be the one winning them." Anything he could do to plant a little seed of dissent with two teammates, it was pretty funny," Wojnarowski said in his podcast. 

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While the Lakers were a team clearly on a decline, OKC Thunder were one of the hottest teams in the NBA during the early 2010s. After knocking out the Lakers during the playoffs in 2012, Thunder made it all the way to the Finals before losing to the Miami Heat. Thunder's rise in the league ended without a championship as James Harden was traded to the Houston Rockets the very next season while Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors as a free agent in 2016.

By the time, Durant and Westbrook moved away, Kobe Bryant had already retired from the NBA. Westbrook was the last of Thunder's deadly trio to leave the franchise; he joined the Rockets at the start of the 2019-20 season. 

As for Bryant's prediction for Russell Westbrook, the 31-year-old went onto become the scoring champion twice (2015 & 2017). His 2017 run is, so far, the best of his career, where he snatched the scoring title on the back of a 30-point triple-double season. Meanwhile, Durant won four scoring titles, all coming with the Thunder.  

Kobe Bryant, along with his daughter Gianna and seven others, passed away in January 2020 after being involved in a tragic helicopter crash near Calabasas, California. 

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(Image Credits: Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant Instagram)