"It's about winning" - Lisa Leslie on being a star in Los Angeles at the same time as Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal

L.A. was dominating the 2000s basketball world. The Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA three-peated as champions from 2000-2002, while the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA won back-to-back titles in 2001 and 2002.

The best player on the Sparks during this stretch was Lisa Leslie, who quickly became a star in the area. She joined Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal as the most popular athletes in Los Angeles and reflected on being on the same level as two of the top NBA players of all time.

Leslie shouts out Kobe and Shaq

While Bryant and O’Neal were bigger stars than Lisa, given that the NBA is more popular than the WNBA, the basketball-crazed town knew Leslie quite well, given her contributions to the Sparks. In a sense, she was the WNBA’s own version of Kobe or Shaq.

Winning on the court helped her become a star, but there was another factor in the mix: the Lakers themselves. Lisa praised guys like Bryant and O’Neal for being the Sparks’ biggest fans, saying they helped the team gain more credibility from basketball fans everywhere.

“It was great, because one, people were respecting the Lakers and the Sparks, and were like a package thing,” Leslie said on The Draymond Green Show . “We practiced at the same facilities, we played our games at the same facilities, the men supported us. I was telling the WNBA when we had these conversations that our number one fan are the NBA players…The fact that they supported us so much that they would play ball, I would shoot before them, Derek would come in, Kobe obviously, we just had so much connection.”

“I think the biggest thing about being in L.A. is that it’s about winning, and every season that we didn’t win, it felt like a bust. And that’s hard to say when we only had won two championships, but I just couldn’t stand it,” she added.

WNBA and NBA working together

Over the past few years, the WNBA has become increasingly popular among basketball fans, but it’s still nowhere near the level of the NBA. With young stars like Caitlin Clark leading the way, though, that popularity gap could continue to decrease moving forward.

Leslie seems to be making an argument that the NBA is the WNBA’s biggest resource to help them grow, using her own case of stardom as an example. Leslie was great, but without Kobe and Shaq’s support, would she have become as popular as she did?

The big-name stars running the game nowadays, such as Clark, are drawing in viewers on their own, but that may not always be the case. That’s why it’s important for the NBA and their players to continue championing their female counterparts in the WNBA.

Having this sort of recognition alongside Bryant and O’Neal was huge for Leslie, and there are many players in the league today who could benefit from this sort of support. If the two leagues keep working in tandem, it could help basketball’s popularity soar to new heights.

Related: “I really care about what happens with the purple and gold” - Lisa Leslie on Sparks not wanting her to come back and talk to her former team