Over the course of Kobe Bryant's 20-year career, he a***ed through 220 playoff games, 37 NBA Finals and 19 do-or-die games. The Black Mamba excels at playing hard, making clutch shots, and there are a hundred ways he can kill a game.
"Kobe never breaks his word to the fans"
On this day, April 14, 2016, he spent the entire afternoon at his office in Newport Beach, California, composing documents on his laptop and beginning to plan his life after retirement, and didn't leave until the game didn't leave until three hours before it started.
Kobe, uncharacteristically, didn't show up early to the team's practice facility for a game that, for a variety of reasons, wasn't even close to being a critical one from an athletic standpoint. at 16-65, the traditionally dominant Los Angeles Lakers had been declared out of the playoff picture more than a month earlier. That night, the Lakers hosted the Jazz, who were winless in their first few meetings this season. The game was nationally televised on ESPN 2, and the reason it didn't make it to Channel 1 was to make way for the Warriors' history-making 73rd win of the season. Kobe's farewell tour has been going on throughout the season, and head coach Byron Scott has given his young players more workouts, but the Lakers haven't won a game in two weeks.
Kobe flew in a private helicopter all the way from his home in Orange County to Staples Center, where he was about to play in the 1,346th and final regular-season game of his career. Kobe is well aware that his health is not what it used to be, "I never thought I could play such a monster game after a long break."
From his debut to his curtain-raiser, the earth has traveled 20 full revolutions around the sun, and a year ago today, the Lakers' signature superstar was only 48 minutes away from retirement. Before the game started, Scott told Kobe that his playing time tonight was absolutely unrestricted and he could do whatever he wanted. Kobe was on cloud nine, the 37-year-old Black Mamba has fought for more than 57,000 minutes a **** in the NBA, and after the agonizing pain of battling injuries for the past three seasons, with a team of professional caregivers shadowing him every day, Kobe let go of his wanting to be strong, he didn't want to play too much.
Kobe walked into the Staples Center at 5:11 p.m. in the evening, following an original plan that would have seen him please the crowd while avoiding more injuries. "(I'm going to) take a couple nice rounds and just let them get nostalgic." Kobe told ESPN.
"Kobe never breaks his word to the fans." Magic Johnson, another respected Lakers Hall of Famer, said before the game, "He's dedicated to the team, and these five championship banners are a testament to that."
"Don't pass the ball!"
First came the moving speech, followed by a video tribute and a standing ovation, and the Staples Center was packed to the rafters, with a crowd of mostly celebrities and nearly 500 members of the media from 16 different countries observing every move up close and personal, and the game officially began as the referee threw the ball high in the center circle. The scene of such a tsunami far beyond the imagination of Kobe, has always been known as a solo Black Mamba, but this time to become the protagonist of a crazy party. Every time Kobe touched the ball, the sidelines erupted in thunderous applause and cheers, the audience wanted to see him shoot, and so did his teammates, and the ball was constantly sent to Kobe's hands.
"As soon as the game started, I was like, 'Oh! Hell.'" Kobe recalled, "It couldn't have been more obvious that I wasn't going to be able to deliver if I just played middling. It was a game that was either going to be amazing or a bust. Because they were passing me the ball as if they had planned it, and the crowd was inciting me to take every shot myself. I even felt bad for my teammates because all it took was one 'unauthorized' shot and they were greeted with boos from their own fans."
In retrospect, Kobe finds it somewhat ironic that, after 20 years of hearing his fans yell "Pass the ball" the most every night, that night they yelled the exact opposite -- "Don't pass the ball! "Don't pass the ball!" But it wasn't all smooth sailing in his farewell game, as Kobe's first five shots in the opening half all ended in iron.
After that, it was one of the most memorable games of Kobe's career, if not in the history of the sport.
Returning to the top
With 5:11 left in the first quarter, Kobe finally hit his first shot. Less than 30 seconds later, it was followed by a 16-footer from the left bullhorn. A successful layup for a 3-pointer, a baseline jumper from the right side, a 3-pointer from the right wing and a couple of free throws followed, as Kobe scored 15 consecutive points to cap the first quarter and the show officially kicked off.
Kobe rested for most of the quarter, then re-dressed for the game. Before the end of the 4 minutes 56 seconds, Kobe along the right baseline breakthrough layup, from the former are used to dunk the end of the round, but now Kobe just hands gently put the ball into the basket. After hitting a few free throws, Kobe made consecutive fakes on the left wing and hit a three-pointer against the defender. The half was only over and Kobe had already cut down 22 points.
After the changeover, Kobe's firepower became even more ferocious. He first dodged two defenders in the air to hit a pick-and-roll, then met the defense to hit a 9-foot jumper, and then the following round, Kobe again two-handed layups, if the former "Peter Pan", the ball should have been a thunderous abuse of the rim to the end.
With 5:35 left in the third quarter, Kobe scored on a layup, followed by his signature baseline turnaround jumper, which the defense could only see into the net. Then, Kobe hit a forced shot from the right bottom corner, and in the final minute, he broke into the penalty area and scored in the face of a back-and-forth attack. After three quarters, Kobe scored 37 points, a number that has already made history, but the Black Mamba's show is far from over.
The past 19 seasons have passed before his eyes, and at this point Kobe had only one thought, play the last quarter.
After 9:30 more minutes, Kobe's career would come to an end, as he hit two consecutive 3-pointers from 45 degrees and the top of the arc on the left side of the court, and with 5:41 left in the game, Kobe broke through a three-person huddle and hit a sharply stopping jumper near the restricted area to make it a 45-point game.
In the final three minutes before his retirement, Kobe scored on a layup with a nice fake to shake his defender. The Jazz extended their lead to 10 points in the final 2:36, but 20 seconds later, Kobe hit two free throws amid MVP chants from the crowd to preserve a silver lining for the Lakers.
"Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!"
For some reason, the Jazz's offense suddenly came to a standstill, and they didn't score a single point the rest of the game while Kobe chased them all the way down. In the final 1:45, Kobe held the ball straight to the basket, and he finished the offense with an extremely high arc throw, the ball hit the boards into the frame, which is the 51st point of the Black Mamba. On the next possession, Kobe dribbled between two defenders, then made a sharp jumper from the free-throw line, and the ball went into the net. The Lakers trailed by just four points with less than a minute left in the game.
As he dribbled across half-court, "Kobe! Kobe! Kobe!" The chants became increasingly neat and loud and deafening. Kobe a turn to accelerate forward, head-on collision with a defender, he actually directly shot a three-point shot, the ball incredibly flew into the net. Then, Kobe commanded Randle to do a blocking match, he killed from the left side, around the pile after dribbling to the right, came to the right elbow position of the sharp stop shot, still steady hit, 31 seconds left in the game, the Lakers miraculously took the lead.
The last 14 seconds, Kobe has been tired and breathless, the hearts of the fans are also mentioned in the throat. Kobe ended the epic scoring performance by hitting two solid shots from the free-throw line, where he scored his first points since entering the NBA that year.
Kobe scored 60 points, a height he hasn't touched again since the 2009 Madison Square Garden game. At the same time, it was the highest score in NBA history for a regular-season farewell game (the previous record was 29, set by John Havlicek), or the most points ever scored by a player 37 years old or older in NBA history. (The previous record was 51 points, set by Michael Jordan on Dec. 29, 2001.)
Kobe's comeback shot was the 62nd of his career, and hitting the game-tying shot in the final minute of the fourth quarter or in overtime is unmatched in the past 20 seasons. Kobe single-handedly scored 23 points in the fourth quarter, covering the entire Jazz team's 21 points, which was the 11th time in his career that he scored at least 20 points in the fourth quarter, a statistic that is also the most in the last 20 years. Kobe lived up to his reputation as Mr. Key, scoring 15 of the Lakers' final 17 points and playing all 42 minutes of the game, the longest he's played since 2013. Kobe made 50 shots a **** in the game, setting a new career record for shots taken in a single game, and a record for shots taken in a single game by any player in the last decade or so.
After the game, Kobe stood in the center circle and waved to the fans.
"What am I supposed to say?" Kobe smiled and said, "Mamba strikes."
"That's right, we're all getting younger."
Kobe recalled that what looked like a dreamlike night on the set was actually accompanied by a sense of fatigue on the verge of pushing the limits. During every timeout, he just sat there quietly, staring ahead, his chest heaving with gasps, like a guy who almost drowned. "I'm just exhausted, man."
In the 20th season of his career, Kobe has been plagued by injuries, ankle contusions, shoulder soreness and overall pain and fatigue that have caused him to miss games. He has been forced to play selectively, usually prioritizing matchups with traditional archrivals, nationally televised games, and the last ballpark he visited, while avoiding stepping on thunder in his schedule and trying not to play back-to-back games. Along the way, Kobe was careful to save his stamina for his curtain-raiser, but by the second half, you could still clearly sense that Kobe was running a little low.
Kobe later described the feeling as if you had fought your way through a grueling series and then realized you couldn't even stand up, and you had to struggle to keep your legs conscious. Timeouts and dead balls seem to exist only to give Kobe some breathing room. "(Fatigue) is one of the enemies you have to fight, too." Kobe said, "When that moment came, there was no turning back for me. I took a big breath and hoped I could inhale some energy for my legs."
That's right, with socialites cheering and former teammates in tow, it seemed like Kobe had returned to his prime overnight. But whenever there was a chance of a dead ball, most of his attention was focused on how to rejuvenate himself as the Lakers trailed by as many as 15 points.
"After the score caught up, I said, 'OK, just work a little harder and flip it.'" He said, "Then the ball kept going into the net, and the score was getting closer and closer, and 'OK, I'm losing feeling in my legs, but I've got to rivet it and score another goal.' And sure enough, I hit another one, and I thought, 'That's one more goal.'"
Kobe recalled one goal that night that he will never forget. It was with about a minute left in the game when Kobe forced a 3-pointer from the left side to help the Lakers cut the deficit to one point. "I swear to God, that three-pointer felt short to me." Kobe said, "It really felt short, I couldn't feel my legs at all when I jumped, and the moment I got up in the air, it was like they disappeared. I thought to myself, 'Crap,' that shot felt short and off to me. So I stayed in the same position I was in when I took the shot as the ball flew toward the basket, hoping to change the trajectory of the ball. My eyes followed it and it just flew all the way into the net, and 'Holy crap, that shot actually went in.'"
Staples instantly exploded, and Kobe performed a small, impromptu celebratory dance routine. A local TV commentator noticed the scene, "Kobe's so tired, you see, he can't even lift his legs." As Kobe passed Lakers diehard Jack Nicholson, the actor swooshed up from his courtside seat and clapped in honor of Kobe, then swung his hands to the sky as if he were many years younger all of a sudden.
"That's right, we all got younger." Kobe said.
"I'm proud of this 20-year career"
A few hours after the game ended, and with the clock ticking into the early morning hours of the next day, Kobe stripped off the champagne-soaked purple-and-gold jersey, wearing a pullover, sweatpants and a pair of sneakers and returned to the the court, accompanied by his wife, Vanessa, and two daughters, Natalie and Gianna. He delivered his autographs, which will be auctioned off to the public, at a number of locations on the court. Kobe then posed for a photo with his family at the center-circle location of the stadium, and finally, he stayed to chat with others for a while.
"We're not in a hurry at all." Kobe said, "Normally, I'd get through the interviews as fast as I could because there was a practice or a game scheduled for the next day, but that day was different, there was no more games. It wasn't two or three days off, it was saying goodbye to basketball for good, saying goodbye to old friends, some of whom I've known for 17 years, 20 years, writers, photographers, sound engineers and producers. I wanted to have plenty of time to say goodbye to each and every one of them."
Kobe left Staples in the early hours of the next morning as the helicopter drilled into the clear night sky toward his Orange County home. Kobe looked down at the dome, "I'm not only proud of this game, I'm proud of this 20-year career. Flying over the dome, I still remember when I laid the cornerstone of Staples with Shaq, and now I'm flying over it to see how downtown has changed over the years, to see how we, me, Shaq, my family, and the city have each grown over the years, and this is the last time I'll ever fly over this, and I couldn't be more proud of myself watching it. "
And how did it feel to wake up the next day? "I felt great, actually." Kobe said, "My body senses that, it knows I'm not going to have another intense race, it's finally really getting a break, and we don't have to push ourselves past our limits anymore. So when I woke up the next day, my ankles didn't hurt, my legs weren't sore, my shoulders didn't hurt. That felt really great!"
Because he's overseeing the production of a documentary for his final season, our five-time champion and No. 3 all-time scorer (behind Jabbar and Karl Malone) watched the game on tape and focused on the final minutes.
Kobe scored 15 points in the final 3:15, hitting all five of his shots, including a 3-pointer plus four free throws, to lead the Lakers on a 17-2 run. Kobe is at the top of the Lakers' all-time list in points, field goals, 3-pointers made, steals and games played, yet no matter how many times he watches it back, the final minutes of the game still seem so incredible to him. "I was watching the video and saying to myself, 'No way, no way, there's no way that shot's going in.'" He said. The near-crazy fans, the passionate commentary kept Kobe content. Maybe Kobe will, as always, blow through everything he does, but that curtain-raiser was an exception.
"That's the only game, watching the replay, that I can get lost in and just enjoy."