Chicago Bulls: John Starks says that Kobe tried to ‘duplicate MJ’
In a recent interview with Hoops Hype this week, the former New York Knicks shooting guard and one-time All-Star John Starks opened up about a number of topics, including those relating back to the Chicago Bulls. Starks played in the NBA during a lot of those years where the Knicks and Bulls were very heated rivals in the Eastern Conference.
Starks got to face the all-time great shooting guard Michael Jordan and the Bulls during those great dynasty years in the 1990s. But the Knicks were a solid team in the East too that gave the Bulls a run for their money more often than not.
In this interview, Starks also discussed a subject that struck an emotional chord with a lot of people in the 10-part documentary series “The Last Dance”, the relationship between the Los Angeles Lakers Hall-of-Fame shooting guard Kobe Bryant and MJ. Starks discussed the matter of how good Kobe was, and how different his mentality was right out of the gates when he first entered the NBA in the late 1990s.
He noted that Kobe did all he could to model his game after MJ in the early years of his career. Starks even mentioned at one point that Kobe essentially tried to “duplicate” what MJ brought to the table in his hay day with the Bulls.
The words John Starks had on the relationship between Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan and the late Kobe Bryant
Here’s more on what Stark had to say on the matter of Kobe and MJ.
"You could tell he was a student of the game, knew the history of the game. And I think that’s what made him so special as a player, he went out there and say ‘You know what? I want to compare myself to the greats.’ So he looked at obviously the best of the game at that time, Michael Jordan, and he went there every single day trying to duplicate MJ. More than anybody he was the one who came as close to MJ in my book to surpass him but quite couldn’t get there because Michael is a different animal. But I respected that in Kobe."
It is special how the relationship formed between Kobe and MJ. And it helped to spur the career of one of the greatest shooting guards to ever play the game. Kobe had that mentality that made him different, in certain ways as MJ did during the dynasty years with the Bulls.
Kobe and MJ got to face each other a handful of times, but it was definitely their relationship off-the-court that was the most special. You can see how tight they were in the interviews that aired on The Last Dance and from multiple Q/A’s since.
Jordan went on to nab 10 scoring titles, six NBA Championships, 14 All-Star selections, six Finals MVPs, and five NBA MVPSs, during his playing days in the league. Meanwhile, Kobe went on to get a whopping 18 All-Star selections, five NBA Championships, two scoring titles, one NBA MVP, and two Finals MVPs.
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Heartfelt stories about the noted relationship between Jordan and Kobe will continue to make waves across the basketball landscape for years to come. It’s special to get to hear about, from a player’s perspective specifically like Starks, what it was like to face those two in their playing days in the NBA.