For fans who lived through the early 2000s, few rivalries in basketball felt as raw and personal as the battles between the Sacramento Kings and the Los Angeles Lakers. The NBA was in a golden age of drama: Shaquille O’Neal in his prime, Kobe Bryant ascending to superstardom, and a Kings team built on unselfish, high-octane basketball that dared to challenge the dynasty in purple and gold.

Year after year, these two California squads clashed under the brightest lights, producing not just games, but wars. Bodies collided, tempers flared, and trash talk blurred the line between respect and outright hostility. Doug Christie and Rick Fox once squared up in a playoff scuffle that spilled into the tunnel. Shaquille O’Neal regularly mocked the Kings as the “Queens.” And by the time the 2002 Western Conference Finals came around, the rivalry had reached a boiling point.

It’s against this backdrop that Mike Bibby, the calm, clutch point guard who joined the Kings in 2001, recently reminded fans just how deep those feelings went. Asked if he would ever have pulled a “Kevin Durant move” and joined the Lakers after losing to them, Bibby didn’t hesitate. His answer? A flat-out no.

“No. Just for the fact of, like, the rivalry that we had going against them, it was real, like, I hated them,” Bibby said during a recent appearance on the Straight Game Podcast. “But like, outside the court it was good, but like, we really hated the Lakers, you know what I mean? … And I mean, I wouldn’t have thought of trying to join. I was going to get traded to them. I talked to Kobe one time.”

That single word, “hated”, isn’t new for Bibby. He’s been consistent for decades about how much those battles shaped him. Back in 2020, he admitted, “The fans hated me. I probably hated them.” By 2023, he was still joking that he “still doesn’t like the Lakers,” even saying, “It could be my son, my daughter… we taking them down.” Clearly, the bitterness of those playoff losses never fully left.

And there’s good reason for that. Bibby and his Kings teammates remain haunted by the 2002 Western Conference Finals, one of the most infamous series in NBA history. The Kings, who finished with the league’s best record that season (61-21), pushed Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers to the brink, only to watch Game 6 descend into controversy.

Game 6 has become legend, for all the wrong reasons. The Lakers were awarded 27 free throws in the fourth quarter alone, compared to just nine for the Kings across the entire game. Bibby, who averaged 23 points in that series, even took an elbow to the face from Kobe without drawing a foul. The Kings, who had looked like the better team, lost, and the Lakers went on to claim another championship.

Years later, Bibby admitted that teammate Chucky Brown warned him before the game: “If they bring in this crew, it’s not gonna go the way we like.” He now frames that night as the moment the championship was “taken from us.” The disgraced referee Tim Donaghy would later claim the NBA manipulated games to extend series, which only fueled Sacramento’s belief they had been robbed.

For Bibby, that experience wasn’t just about basketball. It was about betrayal. “We hated them. Like if they hated us, we hated them. That’s just the way it was,” he said.

Almost a Laker?

The irony is that Bibby came closer than fans might think to wearing purple and gold. After his Kings years ended, he revealed that he’d actually spoken to Kobe Bryant about joining the Lakers. A trade was in the works. But the Kings’ owners, the Maloof brothers, refused to send him to a divisional rival. Years later, he is now the head coach for the Sacramento State men’s basketball team.

That decision kept the rivalry pure, but it also ensured Bibby never had to confront the irony of suiting up alongside the very players he once despised. Instead, he went to Atlanta and finished his career in other cities, never shedding that “King who stood up to Shaq and Kobe” identity.

While Bibby speaks of hatred, Shaquille O’Neal has shown a different kind of respect. At a recent fundraiser, Shaq admitted he once wanted to “physically fight” Bibby during those matchups. But he also called him the “only MFer with heart” on those Kings teams. That’s high praise coming from the most dominant big man of his era, proof that even in the fiercest rivalries, respect lingers beneath the fire.

Bibby’s story isn’t just about a player refusing to join an enemy. It’s a reminder of an NBA era when rivalries burned hot enough to inspire real animosity. Today, with players jumping teams more freely, it’s almost hard to imagine a star rejecting Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant’s Lakers out of hatred. But Bibby’s refusal captures the essence of those early 2000s wars: Kings vs. Lakers wasn’t just basketball, it was personal.

And even now, more than two decades later, the sting remains. The Kings have yet to return to the Finals. Lakers fans argue Sacramento “choked” in Game 7, missing open shots. Kings players insist the league robbed them. Bibby’s words keep that debate alive, ensuring the 2002 rivalry never fades into history.

The tale of Mike Bibby and the Lakers proves how deep rivalries can run. He had the chance to link up with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, but his heart wouldn’t let him. Too much bad blood. Too many memories of whistles gone the wrong way. Too much hate.

But here’s the question for you: If you were in Mike Bibby’s shoes, would you have swallowed the rivalry and joined Shaquille O’Neal’s Lakers to chase a ring, or stayed loyal to your pride, even at the cost of history?