Former Los Angeles Lakers champion Trevor Ariza calls Kobe Bryant the best NBA player of all time, surpassing LeBron James and Michael Jordan.
Ariza played with Kobe and James. First, he was traded to Los Angeles from the Orlando Magic in the 2007-08 season and played with Kobe and the Lakers until the end of the 2008-09 season.
Fast forward to the 2021-22 season, Ariza’s last season in the NBA, and he played 24 games for James and the Lakers in the regular season. By that point in his NBA career, he was aging and averaging just 4.0 points per game, so his second spell with the storied franchise was forgettable.
Although Ariza played with James and Kobe, his time playing with Kobe was more memorable. After all, he was a vital part of the 2008-09 Lakers team that went on to defeat the Magic in the 2009 NBA Finals. In 82 regular season games for the Lakers, he averaged 8.9 points, 4.3 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game, shooting 46.0% from the field and 31.9% from three-point range.
He played solid basketball against his old team, the Magic, in the 2009 Championship Series. Ariza averaged 11.0 points and 6.0 rebounds per game and shot 41.7% from beyond the arc.
Unfortunately for Ariza, he never won another championship in his NBA career after 2009. He did come close, though, with the 2017-18 Houston Rockets taking a 3-2 series lead over Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors in the 2018 Western Conference Finals before losing. Games 6 and 7 of the series.
The debate over who is the greatest basketball player of all time may not be ending anytime soon, but Jordan, James and Kobe are three players who stand out as the ones who are almost always mentioned when discussing the best players in NBA history. Ariza was lucky enough to play alongside two of those three players and two of the best players of his generation.