Dwight Howard calls out Jalen Rose for bizarrely fake Kobe Bryant story

On a recent appearance on Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s “All The Smoke” podcast, Jalen Rose shared a great Kobe Bryant story detailing his reaction to the Dwight Howard trade in 2012. According to Rose, Kobe took a call from Dwight when he found out the trade was happening, then turned back to him and proclaimed “this s--- ain’t gonna work” to Rose once the call ended.

It’s a great story and sounds exactly like something Kobe would do.

Except it didn’t happen. At least not the way Rose tells it.

Jalen was at a camp Kobe Bryant had in 2012, the summer Dwight was traded. That camp took place on July 9 that summer. Dwight would not be traded to the Lakers until a month later on Aug. 10. And Jalen could not have been with Bryant on that day because Kobe was playing in the semi-final of the Olympics in London against Argentina.

Perhaps Kobe found out a month beforehand at his camp that Howard would be traded to the Lakers. It wasn’t much of a secret that Howard preferred to go to Los Angeles that summer. It’s plausible but also unlikely. Especially considering Dwight Howard called out Rose himself on an Instagram post of the video.

It feels like an odd story to make up, so it’s (hopefully) likely that Rose is misremembering parts of the story. Again, it could have happened a month beforehand at the camp, though it feels unlikely Kobe was that adamantly against it and the Lakers front office just went through with the trade.

It’s all just very odd because, if true, it would be another great Kobe story but there aren’t many things that indicate this is a true story, at least not as Rose tells it!

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