Green shared his thoughts with one of Bryant’s former teammates, Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal, on O’Neal’s podcast.
“Here’s why I think he’s not,” Green said. “Number one, he played with you, and people hold that against him. Number two, Kobe kind of fell in a weird time. And what I mean by that is Mike (Michael Jordan) left the league. When Mike left the league, y’all were dominating. And then, when you left the Lakers, they had a few rough years – wasn’t great. They didn’t have great rosters. It wasn’t great.
“While it wasn’t going great, there was a young guy in Cleveland starting to make his hay. And so in the years where Kob could have been dominating, which he was from a numbers standpoint, but they weren’t winning nothing. In those years, Bron (LeBron James) was making his hay and starting to make his name and, ‘Is he the best player?’
“And I think the amount of time that it was a consensus that Kobe was the No. 1 in the league – the top guy – I don’t think it was long enough for everybody to say to put him in that conversation because Bron then came and put his name in the conversation. And so from that point on, it’s tug of war – Christmas Day games between those two guys. And so, I don’t think he accumulated enough people in saying that he dominated the way Mike dominated in the length of time that Mike dominated.
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