In less than two months, former Los Angeles Lakers 3-and-D wing Michael Cooper will be officially inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame after being voted in earlier this year. It will be an amazing honor for the 68-year-old Cooper, who won five NBA championships with the Lakers in the 1980s, and then launched a long and successful coaching career that included back-to-back titles with the Los Angeles Sparks.
He will also get his No. 21 jersey retired by the Lakers organization on Jan. 13 at Crypto.com Arena. Jersey retirements are often an occasion when other all-time greats for a franchise are in attendance, and there is one Lakers legend Cooper wishes could be on hand on Jan. 13.
Unfortunately, he cannot, because he tragically passed away four years ago, along with his daughter and seven others, in a helicopter crash.
On his “Showtime” podcast, Cooper said it would’ve been great if Kobe Bryant could’ve made it to his jersey retirement ceremony.
“Kobe would be another one that I wish could be there because it’s kind of like he’s not here, but it’s the year 2024,” Cooper said. “That’s one of his jersey numbers, 24 and 8. I just think that’s something synonymous with the Lakers that’s happening with the young man who I had the chance to, I worked this kid out and I told everybody, Jerry and them said ‘What you think, Coop?’ I said, ‘He got it.’ So Kobe would be one that I wish that was there, I forget about him.”
Cooper referred to a pre-draft workout in 1996 that the Lakers held, during which they decided to see what Bryant was made of. So they had Cooper, who had retired from the NBA six years prior but was still in great physical shape, guard Bryant as if the 17-year-old were Michael Jordan or Larry Bird.
Bryant passed that stiff test with flying colors, and then-executive Jerry West knew he had to have the Philadelphia-area native.
Weeks later, he traded starting center Vlade Divac to the Charlotte Hornets for the draft rights to Bryant, who went at No. 13 in that year’s draft. The rest, as they say, was history.
