Before Richard Hamilton was a top-10 draft pick by the Wizards or an NBA champion with the Pistons, he was a superstar scorer at Coatesville Area Senior High School in Pennsylvania.
Players like Hamilton, you know, the type that replace Ray Allen at UConn, win an NCAA championship and earn the Most Outstanding Player Award for the Final Four are typically the best players in their state growing up. This wasn't the case for the Coatesville native.
Kobe Bryant played at Lower Merion around the same time Hamilton was a Red Raider, but the latter didn't think much of the future Hall of Famer before they faced off in a battle of interstate powerhouses.
"Being from a town of only 10,000 people, I thought I was the best thing since sliced bread," Hamilton said in an AMA with Bleacher Report. "My HS coach one day was like, 'Hey, man, you think you're really good, there's a kid down the street who's probably just as talented as you.' I was like, yeah right.
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"I remember in pregame looking at the opposite end of the court, looking at him, he started doing 360s and windmills, I was like, oh man, maybe he does jump higher than me, but it really doesn't matter until the ball's thrown up," he said. "He ended up getting the win and he outscored me. That was the first time in my basketball career someone came into my [high school] gym and outscored me."
As Hamilton went on to star at UConn, Bryant went directly to the NBA to play with the Lakers. Bryant would ultimately win five NBA titles, an MVP award and turn into a basketball icon many of today's NBA stars idolized growing up. Hamilton's high school story is just one in a line of endless tales about Bryant's excellence on a basketball court.
Hamilton eventually got revenge on Bryant for giving him buckets in his own gym, however. The Pistons would go on to defeat the Lakers in the 2004 NBA Finals in five games, delivering Detroit its first championship since 1990 and unofficially ending the Kobe-Shaq era in Los Angeles.
Hamilton just so happens to have recalled two memorable stories about two of the best shooting guards of all time, the other about Michael Jordan showing him the benefits of a mid-range jumper, on the same week The Last Dance is set to air an episode about Bryant and Jordan's relationship toward the end of MJ's career.
Some basketball fans may miss that episode, but I can tell you I will not be one of those people.
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