Mike Gelabale doesn’t have many good memories in the NBA. Here is a little painful anecdote for him, told by Kobe Bryant.
The career of Mickaël Gelabale, 38 years old and still active in the French elite with Chalon-sur-Saöne has a lot of good memories in selection and club, but they are not really related to the NBA. The Guadeloupean played 145 games in the best league in the world with Seattle, then Minnesota, without ever managing to express himself fully there. In 2018, Kobe Bryant had briefly mentioned Gelabale, crossed during a training camp with the Los Angeles Lakers.
It was unfortunately not to compliment him that the « Black Mamba » had narrated his first meeting with the Frenchman at HoopsHype.
– « Kobe, do you remember a particularly scared player playing against you? »
– « We had this player who went to training camp with us, Mike Gelabale. He was a young guy, even though he had been in the league before. I could tell right away he was nervous.
We’d had an altercation when he was playing in Seattle. And now he had to face me every day in practice. He was really, really, nervous. I made it a point to make his camp hell (laughs). »
