Of course during that time, Shaq was at his absolute peak as clearly the most dominant player in the league. Kobe was one of the top players in the league as well, but was undoubtedly the second option as everything ran through the big man in the middle.
This led to many saying that Kobe was simply riding the coattails of Shaq, something that didn’t sit well with him. Kobe made an appearance on The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter Podcast and spoke about that talk of being a supporting player driving him to prove that he could win without Shaq:
“It was just an itch.