http://www.si.com/nba/2015/04/10/matt-barnes-los-angeles-clippers-kobe-bryant-lakers-chris-paul
The rest of the season was a haze. He couldn’t compartmentalize his grief. He got injured and fell out of the rotation. A little over a year after the Warriors’ "We Believe" team knocked off the top-seeded Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, Barnes was on the move. Again.
First it was Phoenix, then Orlando. Then, in 2010, Barnes was prepared to accept a sizeable free agent deal with the Raptors when his phone rang.
“Hey” said a voice. “It’s Kobe.”
NBA
Kobe Bryant on growing old, players he respects and finding his inner Zen
by Chris Ballard
This came as a surprise to Barnes, to say the least. Not only had he never talked to Bryant on the phone, but the two men had history. While in Orlando, Barnes had gotten into it with Bryant more than once. Pushing. Talking. Elbow-throwing. Once, Barnes pretended to chuck a ball at Kobe’s face; Bryant didn’t even flinch. But now here was Bryant, calling and asking Barnes where he was going to sign. Said Kobe: “You want to be a Laker?”
Barnes would have to take less money. There’d be less security.
He didn’t hesitate: “Hell yeah!”
Later, Bryant explained his reasoning: “Anyone crazy enough to mess with me is crazy enough to play with me.”
Among all the dogs in the league, Barnes considers Kobe to be the alpha.
On his first flight with the Lakers, to an overseas exhibition game, Barnes noticed Bryant bobbing his head and muttering in his seat, a few rows ahead of him. Barnes couldn’t tell if he was rapping or talking on the phone. He walked over to find Kobe scribbling on a piece of paper. “What are you doing?” he asked
Bryant looked up. “I’m drawing our offensive plays and where I’ll get double-teamed in the triangle,” he said. In front of him was a piece of paper with roughly 30 tiny diagrams of half courts, all marked up. “That way I can figure out where you guys are going to be open.”
A preseason flight and this is what Kobe was doing? Now this, Barnes thought, was a dude he wanted to go to war with. Partly for this reason, Barnes considers it crap when people say free agents don’t want to go to the Lakers because of Bryant. “The reason people don’t want to go to the Lakers is because of management,” Barnes says. “Kobe can be the scapegoat all they want but if you play hard, Kobe likes you. And if you bulls--- around, he doesn’t. It’s plain and simple. He’s not a vocal leader. He just expects you to play as hard as you can every minute on the court, like he does.
