"I would have kicked his butt" - Kobe Bryant once revealed his trash talk aimed at future nemesis Rip Hamilton's legendary March Madness run

Kobe Bryant has been known for his ruthless attitude on the court, often trash-talking his opponents to try to affect their game. While he became an all-time great player in the NBA, Bryant’s trash talk was never heard at the collegiate level as he leaped from high school to the NBA in 1996.

In a 1999 interview with the Newsweek, Bryant revealed that he once had an exchange with future NBA champion and then University of Connecticut star Richard "Rip" Hamilton, who led the Huskies to the NCAA title that year. Bryant told Hamilton that if he played in college and faced him in the March Madness, Hamilton would have never had his moment.

"We do a lot of trash talking," Bryant said in 1999. "I tell him if I'd been there I would have kicked his butt and he would have never made it to the Final Four."

After leading the Huskies to the title, the guard was drafted in 1999 by the Washington Wizards. He then played for the Detroit Pistons, helping them win the 2004 NBA championship against Bryant’s LA Lakers, which had Gary Payton, Karl Malone, and Shaquille O’Neal on its roster that year.

Bryant and Hamilton would have been rivals on the NCAA circuit if he decided to take his talents to college. The Lakers legend and the Pistons great were from the same high school class but Hamilton chose to play in college from 1996 to 1999.

A year after the interview, Bryant won his first-ever NBA title in 2000, before completing the three-peat in 2001 and 2002 alongside O’Neal in what is remembered as one of the best duos in NBA history. Hamilton won NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player in 1999 and was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame.

Rip Hamilton calls Kobe a 'special human being’

With their strong connection, Richard "Rip" Hamilton and Kobe Bryant spent most of their lives competing on the court. But when outside of it, they had mutual respect for each other. In an interview in 2022, Hamilton looked back on Bryant’s life and how his mentality defined a generation.

"Very special human being man, I mean a lot of people know Kobe because of what he has done on the basketball court, especially his career with the Lakers but I've been knowing him since we were kids,” Hamilton said.

The former Detroit Piston spoke about Bryant's mentality and said:

"Very special human being, taught me a whole lot, especially from the simple fact of having that killer instinct, when you hear mamba mentality, people hear that late, Kobe's championships, you know MVP's and everything like that, no, he had that mamba mentality at 15-16 years old.”