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PAOerfulone said:

Kobe was A reason, but not THE reason.
The main reason Shaq left was simple: Shaq wanted to be paid $30 million a year, Dr. Jerry Buss (God rest his soul) wasn't going to pay him.
Shaq even said so himself:
https://youtu.be/j7LOi1F4DwE
Now obviously Shaq is full of it when he says there wasn't a bad relationship, but as a professional athlete, your career is very short, so you look to make as much money as you can in that time frame. But that wasn't happening for Shaq.
As for Phil: He came back didn't he? He and Kobe worked it out and got 2 more titles together. So what happened between them doesn't matter now because they worked it out it, put it behind them, and made more history.

Phil might have came back but he left again mostly because of Kobe.  So not only where there a ton of players that left because of Kobe being a lousy teammate he also made one of the best coaches of all time leave twice because he isn't that coachable either.