"No," Hodges says flatly when I ask him at one point in the first half if any players on the team stand up to Kobe Bryant and critique him if he does something detrimental to the team. On this occasion it was Bryant not sprinting back on defense after turning the ball over with a bad pass.
"Not one. They all kiss his a--."
I follow up by asking whether anybody on the Bulls teams that he won rings with in 1991 and 1992 ever called out Michael Jordan, a similar ball-dominant, once-in-a-generation talent with just as domineering a personality as Bryant.
Hodges looked at me straight in the eye, slowly raised his hand like he had the correct answer at school and broke into a wide smile.
