Why the L.A. Lakers Will Never Consider Trading Kobe Bryant

There isn't a player in the NBA less likely to be traded than Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.

After 16 seasons, 14 All-Star selections, five championships and a league MVP, Bryant isn't just in possession of a no-trade clause, he's immune from being involved in the normal trade rumors that plague everyday athletes.

Bryant may be 33 going on 34, he may be working on deteriorating knees and he may be raking in more than $58 million over the next two seasons, but dealing him is an avenue Los Angeles will never explore.

Leaving as a free agent in two years is one thing—though an unlikely occurrence in itself—but to even entertain the notion that a big market team like the Lakers, who have the means to pay Bryant's salary regardless of how rapidly he ages, would be a grave mistake.

Bryant is the face of the Lakers and the face of basketball in Los Angeles. He's dedicated 16 years to the purple and gold cause, and while the going hasn't always been easy, he's entered the twilight years of his career with the kind of stability even his no-trade clause couldn't provide.

Imagining the Lakers openly shopping Bryant, or even becoming amenable to dealing him, is like expecting the San Antonio Spurs to have dealt Tim Duncan or believing the Dallas Mavericks will move Dirk Nowitzki—except that Los Angeles shipping out Bryant is crazier.

Bryant means too much to the Lakers for them to trade him, regardless of the circumstances. The franchise and him have simply been through too much the past 16 years.

While the NBA is a cut-throat business where a championship ring and finances reign supreme, Bryant could be rendered unable to play for the next two seasons, and he still wouldn't be going anywhere.

The Black Mamba has established the kind of emotional ties with Los Angeles that are too strong to be severed; he shares a connection with the Lakers that neither Dwight Howard nor LeBron James will ever experience.

Sure, there have been a few trade demands from Bryant's camp over the years, but what "relationship" doesn't have a few bumps in the road?

Whenever push came to shove, Bryant was there for the Lakers to lean on—no indecisive list of demands or nationally documented blueprint to abscond from Los Angeles necessary.

Bryant is a winner, a fighter and a prolific game-changer, but most importantly, he's loyal, a virtue that is lost on many athletes today. To believe that the Lakers will do anything but reciprocate that loyalty, almost two decades into his tenure, is absolutely insane.

Building a winning franchise is about living in the present while also looking toward the future. Basking in the past is about as taboo as it gets for professional sports, yet Bryant's history with the Lakers is too polarizing to just forget and rooted too deeply to just rip up.

And that matters just as much as what Bryant continues to do for the franchise and for the city of Los Angeles.

Trading Bryant, or even considering to, would be a public relations nightmare and an act of betrayal, and neither are a play we should expect to see out of Jerry Buss' or Mitch Kupchak's playbook.

Bryant isn't just a player to the Lakers—he's a witness to the franchise's glory days and after more than a decade and a half, still a pillar of hope for them to build upon. And while there will come a time when Bryant isn't duking it out with Kevin Durant for a scoring title, that's what his legacy is for—to prevent the Lakers from having to make a seemingly impossible decision.

Bryant is the longest-tenured player in the NBA, with ties to Los Angeles that go beyond finances and victories and that are strong enough to weather the inevitable regression he will experience as an athlete.

And that's a notion we just have to accept as fact, because the Lakers are not going to trade, or even consider trading, Bryant.

Not now, not ever.