Shaq-Kobe feud revisited: O'Neal reportedly threatened to kill Bryant in '04

For those not old enough to remember, the 2003-04 Los Angeles Lakers were supposed to be a juggernaut that would easily claim the franchise's fourth NBA title in five seasons.

Hall of Fame-bound power forward Karl Malone and point guard Gary Payton took pay cuts to join Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in the summer of 2003, effectively creating the decade's first "Super Team."

While the team was good, winning the Western Conference, they fell flat in the Finals against the Detroit Pistons, losing in five games. And beneath the surface, the cracks in the Shaq-Kobe relationship became irreparable.

In an oral history for Bleacher Report, the major players in the drama talked about that 2003-04 season. Team public relations VP John Black specifically mentions an occasion in which teammate (and future NBA coach) Brian Shaw had to pull the players apart, when O'Neal threatened to kill Bryant after Kobe vented about Shaq publicly to reporter Jim Gray:

Mostly it was Shaq and Kobe didn't like each other, but it didn't affect them on the court. They would say something about the other, on or off the record, but it didn't become confrontational more than two or three times over the eight years. When Kobe gave the statement to Jim Gray where he went off calling Shaq fat and lazy, that was one of the times. There was one really bad one, early on. Brian Shaw had to pull them apart. Shaq threatened to murder Kobe.

Given the conspicuous nature of the feud at the time, the death threat may not have been surprising. That an attempt was made to restrain a 350-pound Shaq, however, is.

Either way, the season was O'Neal's last in Los Angeles. The Lakers opted to stick with the 26-year-old Bryant, and the big man was traded to the Miami Heat a month after the Lakers fell to the Pistons.

Bryant told Bleacher Report that the season was the final straw in terms of playing with O'Neal.

I wasn't going to play with Shaq anymore after that ... Things he had said, criticism from the media in saying I can’t win without him. Look, I put that individual s--t aside to win championships and now I'm getting criticized for it. Now I'm going to show you f--ks what I can do on my own. So that challenge, I was going to answer that challenge no matter what - whether I was going to stay in L.A. or go somewhere else, I was going to answer that challenge.

Malone retired following that 2003-04 season, but not before his own bizarre feud with Bryant sprung up. Payton would go on to win an NBA championship with O'Neal on the 2006 Heat.

And Kobe got his titles on his own - in 2009 and 2010 - with a little help from Pau Gasol.