All-Star brings Shaq, Kobe together again

PHOENIX – Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant spent part of their first day as teammates again helping refurbish a school and its playground.

O’Neal didn’t accuse Bryant of hogging the tools and Bryant didn’t blame O’Neal for being too fat to keep up.

See that, those former feuders are getting along just fine.

The start of NBA All-Star weekend brought the former Los Angeles Lakers teammates together on Friday, five years after the end of a great partnership on the court and a better soap opera off it.

“It’ll be like old times. It’ll be great memories,” O’Neal said. “Kobe’s playing at a very high level right now. It’ll be like old times. I can remember, not that long ago, we were the best tandem ever created in the game. So it’s going to be fun out there.”

They will take the floor on Sunday for the first time since the 2004 NBA finals, when they were upset by the Detroit Pistons, letting another possible title slip away.

They won three, but both say they would have won more had they stayed together. O’Neal guessed six or seven, Bryant said “several more,” but all agreed there was no use dwelling on the past.                         

“We just don’t look at things like that in this game,” said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who will coach the Western Conference. “Things went the way they were supposed to go, and life goes on as far as that goes.” (AP)