According to a long report from ESPN, there was tons of turmoil in the Lakers front office. One funny excerpt from this report is a bizarre story about Rob Pelinka and Kobe Bryant.

ESPN came out with a longform piece on the Lakers front-office and all of the drama behind the scenes of the 2018-2019 season. Much of this report was about the ongoing saga between former Lakers great Magic Johnson, and Lakers GM Rob Pelinka. While that is all interesting, there’s a single piece that needs to have attention brought to.

ESPN’s story specifically mentions one time when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was visiting the Lakers facility, as apart of a motivational speaking series. Before Johnson began, Pelinka spoke about the time Kobe Bryant, watched The Dark Knight, and before a game against the Knicks requested and was granted Ledger’s presence for a dinner. The purpose of this dinner was for Kobe to find out as to how the actor got so “locked into” his character, which Kobe later put to use in the game. Here’s video of Pelinka telling said story:

Thankfully, ESPN helped transcribe the video if you don’t want to watch it.

“There was one time when Kobe, who I worked with for 18 years, was going back to play in Madison Square Garden, and he had just seen ‘The Dark Knight,’” Pelinka said. “Obviously, you guys saw that movie, and he’s like, ‘Hey, hook me up with dinner with Heath Ledger, because he got so locked into that role. I want to know how he mentally went there.’ So, he had dinner with Heath, and he talked about how he locks in for a role.

“And Kobe used some of that in his game against the Knicks.”

This story much like Pelinka’s job security, is flimsy at best. Why is that? Well, Heath Ledger was dead by the time the movie released. Now while it is possible that Kobe saw a pre-release of the film, according to director Christopher Nolan, the film wasn’t even half-way edited by the time Ledger passed away. So Pelinka clearly lied about the story, as also confirmed by sources close to the story at ESPN.

Kobe Bryant is considered one of the greatest NBA players of all time, however I doubt his ability to bring a man back from the dead to discuss method acting with him.