[url]Ramona Shelburne of ESPN wrote:[/url]
Antawn Jamison may have moved down the hallway at Staples Center to give himself a better chance to contend for a championship when he signed with the Los Angeles Clippers this week, but he's not ready to write his former team off just yet.
"I would never count Kobe Bryant out of anything," Jamison said Friday in a radio interview on ESPN 710 in Los Angeles. "I've played with some special players. Gilbert Arenas when he was [in Washington D.C], at the top of his game, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal [in Cleveland]. I've played with a lot but never played with an individual player who had the type of mindset, the drive that he has. If [Bryant] says he's going to win a sixth ring, believe me, he's going to do everything possible to get that ring.
"Of course, on the outside looking in you could say, well, that might not happen this year or whatever with him coming off the injury and the Lakers trying to get things together. But I mean, that guy, he's going to do everything possible to get that sixth ring."
"Mike was pretty much put in a difficult situation," Jamison said. "There was no training camp where he could get a feel for guys. There was a breakdown of communication when we first got there. And throughout the season it was kind of up and down.
"I don't dislike Mike. I obviously respect him as a coach. In my eyes, one of the best offensive-minded coaches in the league. I just think he was put in a tough situation ... but toward the end of the season you saw him kind of open up, and we started to have a relationship, and I kind of understood where he was coming from."
What Jamison never figured out though, was why the relationship between Bryant and Howard never developed on the court.
"It was difficult," he said. "I really believed before we got started that those two could co-exist. But it just didn't work out that way. Both guys are unbelievable basketball players, the best we have in the game right now. But for whatever reason we just couldn't get that relationship as far as them communicating and them trusting each other the way you needed them to trust each other in order for us to win a championship. It just didn't happen that way."
http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/stor ... bryant-out
Pretty good tidbits, took out the clipper parts
