President Donald Trump seemed to confirm he once broke up an elevator fight involving former NBA great Kobe Bryant.
The tale of the clash between Bryant and then Nets star Jayson Williams was first publicly told in Jeff Pearlman’s book “ Three-Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil, and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty,” which was published in 2020.
As the story goes, Charles Oakley, when he was with the Knicks, and Williams were in an elevator in the Grand Hyatt in New York, which Trump owned during All-Star weekend in 1998.
Williams supposedly felt Bryant, who was in his second year in the league, didn’t greet the veteran with enough respect and was upset enough to take a swing at the eventual five-time NBA champion.
Trump was then said to be the one who stepped in to de-escalate things. He grabbed Williams and told Bryant, who died in a 2020 helicopter crash along with daughter Gianna and seven others, to “’Get out of here. Quickly.’ ”, according to Pearlman’s book.
Trump was asked during an interview with YouTuber-turned-boxer Jake Paul on Friday if he has ever been in a real fight and brought up an incident with Bryant, but did not mention the elevator or Williams specifically.
“That was a long time ago. Yeah, well I was breaking up a fight, which sometimes is more dangerous than being in a fight,” Trump said. “But I like Kobe. Kobe was having a hard time with somebody and it worked out fine. But yeah, I broke it up — probably not a smart thing to do. Historically, it’s never good to break up fights.”
Oakley, while speaking with Yahoo Sports, said he didn’t not remember being in the elevator that day, but does remember Williams telling the story of the fight on multiple occasions
“He had told it to some people that I was around,’’ Oakley said. “Jayson, he liked to be a story. He’s a storyteller. I told him, ‘Jayson, I mean, you 55, 57. You probably told that story 50 times.’ ’’
