Revisiting the time the Nets chose Kerry Kittles over Kobe Bryant in the 1996 NBA Draft

The late Kobe Bryant remains one of the most celebrated and influential figures in NBA history, remembered not only for his on-court brilliance but also for the legacy he left far beyond the game.

Bryant retired in 2016 after a storied 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, where he scored 33,643 points, captured five NBA championships, and collected a long list of accolades — including the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player award, two Finals MVPs, and four All-Star Game MVPs. In recognition of his greatness, the Lakers retired both of his jersey numbers, 8 and 24 — a rare honor reserved for the game’s true legends.

A Laker for life, Bryant wore No. 8 during his first decade before switching to No. 24 in 2006. Remarkably, he scored more than 16,000 points in each number, a feat that underscored his sustained excellence across two distinct eras of his career.

Kobe later spoke on this and said that he would’ve played for the New Jersey Nets

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Yet history could have been written differently. Before donning the purple and gold, Bryant was eager to join the New Jersey Nets, who passed on him in the 1996 NBA Draft. The Nets selected Villanova guard Kerry Kittles with the eighth overall pick, leaving Bryant to slip to the Lakers at No. 13.

“Well, it’s pretty much my agent, Arn Tellem, just being Arn Tellem,” Bryant once said in an interview. “I love to play so much, I would have played on Mars. They didn’t draft me, so I’m a Laker. But if they would have drafted me, I would have been playing for the Nets — and we would have kicked the Lakers’ butt tonight.”

Former Nets assistant general manager Bobby Marks, now an ESPN analyst, later admitted the decision came down to uncertainty about Bryant’s future. “We passed on Kobe in the 1996 NBA Draft — and I don’t want my good friend Kerry Kittles to be mad at me — but we thought Kobe was going to play in Italy,” Marks revealed in an ESPN segment.

In fairness, Kittles was hardly a bust. He averaged 16.7 points as a rookie to earn All-Rookie Second Team honors, followed it with a stronger second season at 17.2 points per game, and later played a key role alongside Jason Kidd in leading the Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. But persistent knee injuries hampered his career, forcing him to undergo four surgeries in five years and sidelining him for the entire 2000–01 season.

Still, when history is revisited, the Nets’ decision looms as one of the great what-ifs in basketball. Passing on Kobe Bryant — a player who would go on to define a generation — remains one of the franchise’s most haunting missteps.

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