Kobe Bryant and Smush Parker are no longer teammates, which is probably just as well considering the bad blood between the two. Why are the L.A. Lakers so prone to dissing each other?

Bryant talked to the press today, and one of his remarks has extremely upset former Laker point guard Parker, who played on the team in 2005-06. Apparently Bryant still has a chip on his shoulder over losing that year’s NBA MVP trophy to Steve Nash, and blames the loss on his teammates.

Bryant told reporters:

“I tell Steve, you won MVP, but I was playing with Smush Parker. He shouldn’t have been in the NBA but we were too cheap to pay for a point guard. So we let him walk on.”

Not surprisingly, Parker has come out swinging, claiming Bryant is still angry because he once called the Laker star “overrated.”

Parker told TMZ that Bryant was a diva who wouldn’t even talk to his teammates, stating:

“Kobe told me out of his own mouth that I couldn’t talk to him. That my accolades under my belt weren’t deserving enough for me to talk to him.”

Well, nobody ever said Kobe Bryant was modest, but come on!