1996 was a defining year for the NBA. Just a week after Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls captured their fourth title, the league shifted its attention to Draft night. Teams were searching for their next franchise stars. But for Arn Tellem, one of the league’s most powerful agents, the goal was unusually specific: he wasn’t simply trying to get his teenage client drafted as high as possible. He was trying to get him to Los Angeles. And, according to Tellem, Kobe Bryant wanted exactly the same thing.

“I’ll never forget that meeting with Kobe and Joe Bryant in his hotel room. Kobe pulled me down and said, ‘I want to be a Laker,'” Tellem told on The Draymond Green Show. “That’s why I hired you, getting me to the Lakers.”

That wish had deeper roots than a teenager simply preferring Los Angeles. Kobe had grown up around the Lakers’ mythology. His father, Joe Bryant, was a Lakers fan because of Magic Johnson, and Kobe reportedly studied dozens of Lakers games every year. He even wore a Lakers letter jacket and kept a life-sized Magic poster in his room. When Magic announced his retirement in 1991, Kobe was so upset that his family remembered him losing his appetite. Five years later, he had a chance to join the franchise he had spent much of his childhood watching.

Before the 72-year-old became vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons, he worked as Kobe’s agent. Tellem was one of the key figures behind Bryant’s path to Los Angeles. The difficult part, however, was ensuring that another team didn’t take him first. New Jersey was the biggest obstacle. The Nets owned the No. 8 pick, and Tellem recalled that they were the one team most likely to select Kobe.

“When we came out that year, he was going to go to the Nets with the eighth pick,” Tellem shared. “But fortunately, I cut it off at New Jersey, and New Jersey was the one team that was going to take him,” Arn Tellem also added. “And it really wasn’t until, I think, the day before the draft, that Jerry called me, and he finally said, I can get the 13th pick.”

Jerry was Jerry West. And by then, the Lakers executive had already seen enough of Bryant to become convinced that the franchise needed him.

Before acquiring Kobe, the Lakers arranged private pre-draft workouts for the high school phenom. “We had the secret workouts. Jerry and I were very close at that point, and Jerry said he really wanted him, and he loved him,” Tellem said.

West’s own recollection of those workouts was just as striking. Kobe reportedly went up against players expected to be drafted ahead of him, before facing former Lakers defensive specialist Michael Cooper. West later recalled watching the 17-year-old dominate the workout and realizing quickly that he had seen enough. Tellem said West was already thinking bigger than simply adding a teenage prospect.

“Look, I have big plans. I’m going to try to get a big free agent, the big fella, Shaquille O’Neal. I’m going to try to remake this team, and I want Kobe to be part of it.”

That was the real scale of West’s 1996 vision. He wasn’t looking for one piece. He was attempting to reshape the Lakers around a dominant free-agent center, and a teenage guard he believed could become a superstar.

The problem was that Los Angeles did not have a high enough draft pick to take Bryant itself. Charlotte, however, owned the No. 13 selection and had its own priorities. The Hornets had been searching for a center after trading Alonzo Mourning the previous year, making Vlade Divac an attractive target.

The arrangement was straightforward: if Bryant was still available at No. 13, Charlotte would select him and send his rights to Los Angeles in exchange for Divac. The Lakers would get their coveted teenager while also moving their starting center’s salary as they pursued Shaquille O’Neal. But getting Kobe to No. 13 meant surviving New Jersey first.

Tellem recalled sitting beside his friend and rival, David Falk, during the 1996 NBA Draft. Falk represented Kerry Kittles. When the Nets selected Kittles eighth overall, Tellem’s side erupted.

“They’re happy because that’s where they wanted to go. We’re celebrating. We’re going crazy,” Tellem recalled. “They think that’s where we want to go. They don’t understand. They’re looking at us. Why are we celebrating more than they are?”

The reaction caught Falk’s attention. From his perspective, there was little reason for Kobe’s camp to celebrate another player being drafted ahead of him. What Falk didn’t know was that every pick that passed without Kobe being selected brought Tellem’s plan closer to working.

Tellem has since said that New Jersey was the crucial hurdle. Once the Nets passed, he believed Bryant could slide to Charlotte’s pick at No. 13. And he did.

The Charlotte Hornets selected the 17-year-old Bryant with the 13th overall pick. But Charlotte was never supposed to be his final NBA destination. The pick was part of the arrangement that would eventually bring Kobe to Los Angeles. There was, however, one final complication that could have changed everything.

Vlade Divac nearly derailed Kobe Bryant’s move to Los Angeles

The Bryant-for-Divac plan was far from painless for Divac. The Lakers center had spent his entire seven-year NBA career in Los Angeles, built a life there and did not want to leave. When he learned about the trade, Divac initially considered retiring rather than reporting to Charlotte.

“I didn’t like it,” Divac later said of the move. At one point, his threatened retirement put the entire transaction in doubt. Had he followed through, the Lakers would have had to find another way to move his contract and create the space needed for their offseason plans.

Divac eventually changed his mind. He later said his wife encouraged him to continue playing, while the realization that Jerry West had a larger plan also helped him accept the move.

Years later, Divac looked back on the trade with humor.

“If they trade you for a Kobe, that means that you’re not bad,” he once joked. And with even more distance, he was even more direct: “I would trade myself for Kobe, no-brainer.”

The completed transaction ultimately did more than bring Bryant to Los Angeles. Moving Divac helped the Lakers create financial flexibility in their pursuit of O’Neal, who signed with the franchise shortly afterward. In one extraordinary offseason, the Lakers had positioned themselves around two players who would eventually deliver three consecutive championships together.

But the deal also came with one of the stranger twists in NBA history: Divac, who nearly retired rather than leave Los Angeles, eventually returned to the Lakers for the final season of his career in 2004-05 and became teammates with the player for whom he had been traded.

Charlotte’s role was more complicated than simply “not wanting” Kobe Bryant

Kobe later insisted that Charlotte never had any real interest in keeping him.

“Charlotte never wanted me,” Bryant told ESPN’s Baxter Holmes in 2014.

He said Hornets coach Dave Cowens had told him, “We don’t really need you here,” because Charlotte already had guards and small forwards.

Bryant admitted that he had initially been excited about the possibility of playing for Cowens, whom he had grown up watching and respecting.

“I knew who Dave Cowens was and [was] pretty excited [to play for him],” Kobe said. “Then I was like, ‘Oh, all right.’ I quickly transitioned from smiley kid to killer instinct.”

But Cowens later disputed Kobe’s version of events, saying he would never tell a player that he wasn’t wanted. His explanation was that the trade arrangement had already been worked out. That distinction matters.

Charlotte did draft Kobe, but historical reporting shows that the Hornets were primarily focused on acquiring Divac and filling their need at center. So rather than framing it as Charlotte suddenly losing interest in Bryant, the more accurate picture is that Kobe was selected as part of a transaction that had already been designed to send him to Los Angeles.

And according to Tellem’s new account, that outcome wasn’t simply good fortune. Kobe had actively wanted the Lakers, West had become convinced after watching him work out, and Tellem had spent the days leading up to the draft trying to keep other teams from disrupting the plan.

What followed gave the Lakers one of the most consequential summers in franchise history. Bryant stayed in Los Angeles for all 20 seasons of his NBA career, winning five championships. Three came alongside O’Neal after the Lakers’ three-peat from 2000 to 2002, while Kobe later led the franchise to two more titles in 2009 and 2010.

Looking back, the most remarkable part may be how fragile the entire sequence was. The Nets could have taken Kobe at No. 8. Another team could have moved earlier. Divac could have followed through on retirement and complicated the trade. Instead, every piece fell into place.

And if Tellem’s recollection is any indication, it started with a 17-year-old Kobe Bryant making his preference clear long before Draft night: “I want to be a Laker.”