"They are gonna kill me" - Former Kobe Bryant teammate Matt Barnes recalls receiving death threats following infamous incident

Matt Barnes became the villain among the Lakers faithful when he tried to intimidate Kobe Bryant during a game in the 2009-10 season.

It happened when Barnes played for the Orlando Magic. The Lakers were facing the Magic at the Amway Arena in Orlando in 2010. At the beginning of the third quarter, when Barnes was about to pass the ball to his teammate from out of bounds, he found Bryant right in his face.

To intimate Bryant, Barnes made a fake pass directly to Kobe's face, and to his surprise, the Lakers star didn't even flinch.

Recently, now retired Barnes made an appearance on Paul George's "Podcast P with Paul George" show. Addressing the incident, Barnes said that after the incident, the Lakers legend's fans sent death threats to him and his family.

“It was crazy because I was getting super death threats after that,” Barnes said. “I was kind of the bad guy, the villain, whatever. But, I became the real villain after that sh**.

“People said on Twitter they’re gonna kill me. They’re gonna find my address, kill my kids, kill my girl. ‘Come to L.A. You better never come back to L.A. We gonna kill you.’ You can’t fu8* with Kobe. Them eses in L.A. don’t play about the Lakers and [Los Angeles] Dodgers and particularly Kobe. Bro, I got so many death threats. I kid you not.”

Barnes added that one of the reasons that he used the intimidation tactic against the Lakers' most-loved player was because of the competition between both teams. Bryant and the Lakers faced the Magic in the finals in 2009.

Matt Barnes once revealed the reason behind joining Kobe Bryant's Lakers

In November 2022, Matt Barnes appeared on The Pat McAfee Show. When asked about the fake pass incident in 2010, Barnes remarked that he developed a close relationship with Kobe Bryant because of that particular incident.

Barnes revealed that, right after that season, the five-time NBA champion called him. However, since Barnes had gotten death threats, he didn't believe that it was actually Bryant himself. Barnes became a Laker after that phone call.

"He just talked to me. He liked the way I played, how hard I played. The intensity I played with. He told me literally like, 'Anyone crazy to f**k with me is crazy enough to play with me. Do you want to be a Laker?'...Maybe three or four days after he asked me that question, I was a Laker."

Barnes and Kobe Bryant became teammates the very next season. He played with Bryant for two seasons with the Lakers before he joined LA Clippers.