Los Angeles Lakers are the joint-most successful team in the NBA. They have witnessed some of the best players in the NBA history donning their purple and gold. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant played for the Lakers for eight seasons together and won three championships.

Shaq and Kobe formed an elite duo on the court during the early 2000s and helped the Lakers complete the three-peat. However, their relationship off the court was far from perfect. The Lakers traded Shaq to Miami for three players and a future first-round draft pick in 2004. Shaq’s departure to Miami worked out for him as he won a championship, his fourth, in 2006.

However, Kobe Bryant and the Lakers struggled post-Shaq. They failed to replace him and that led to some poor seasons before they rebuild again in the late 2000s. Former NBA star Tracy McGrady has recently opened up on Kobe and Lakers’ struggles after Shaq’s departure.

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Tracy McGrady explains Kobe Bryant and Lakers struggles post Shaquille O’Neal

Tracy McGrady recently appeared on ‘The Draymond Green Show’. During the show, Draymond Green asked T Mac about not winning a championship despite having an incredible career. To this, T Mac said that there are a lot of ‘moving parts’ that come into play to win championships.

“There’s a lot of moving parts that has to come into play to win it to championships… ..I was one of the top players in the league. I just didn’t have the pieces around me,” Tracy McGrady told Green.

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“What happened when Shaq left? And Kobe was there for two years because they struggled a lot. People forget about that, bro. You need the pieces around you to win.”

During Shaq’s last season as a Laker, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals where they lost to Detroit Pistons in 5 games. However, the very next season, the Lakers failed to qualify for the playoffs. Kobe and the Lakers finished 11th in the western conference and failed to make it to the post-season.

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The Lakers qualified for the playoffs in the next two seasons but lost in the first round to the Suns on both occasions. It took the Lakers three seasons to rebuild, as they reached the NBA Finals in 2008 but lost to the Celtics. However, Kobe led the Lakers to two back-to-back championship wins in 2009 and 2010.