Thursday, April 14, 2016

Kobe Bryant's 60 Point Final Act




The Informer: “Did you see what Kobe just did?”
Friend: “No what happened?”
The Informer: “The Lakers were down 10 points with about 2:16 seconds left in his last game ever and he scored 13 straight points and the Lakers won. It was awesome. Oh and he also finished the game with 60 points.”
Friend: “Bull f*****g shit!!!”
The Informer: “Seriously, I couldn’t make this up if I had to.”
That is the text exchange I had with a friend last night after watching Kobe Bean Bryant, playing in the final game of his illustrious 20 year career, score 60 points while willing the Los Angeles Lakers to a 101-96 victory over the Utah Jazz.
I am sharing this exchange for two reasons 1) Who in the hell was not watching Kobe last night? 2) The “bull f*****g shit” line is the perfect way to describe what took place last night in Los Angeles.
Kobe Bryant was ridiculous. He was amazing. He was larger than life. He was whatever word you can think of that basically means “bull f*****g shit there is no way that actually happened”.  
Now, The Informer knows exactly what you are all thinking right now because I am thinking the same exact things: How does a 37-year old man score 60 points in his last NBA game (P.S – it was his sixth career 60 points game which is the second most in NBA history)? And how does a 37-year old man shoot the ball 50 times in a single game? Most importantly, how in the blue hell did the Lakers actually win a game when a 37-year old man shoots the ball 50 times?
The last question is what gets me the most about last night’s game. To quote Herm Edwards: “The Utah Jazz were playing to win the game.” They were not rolling over and letting Kobe Bryant do this. No, they were trying to win this game. They wanted to win this game. And for most of the night, they were on pace to win this game. 
The only problem was, Kobe freaking Bryant gave absolutely zero f***s about the Utah Jazz’s desire to win. 
Nope, in the end April 13th, 2016 was Kobe Bryant's night.
And by Gawd he was not going to let the Jazz, or ESPN (who moved his final game to ESPN 2), or the Golden State Warriors, or Father time take it away from him.
Hell, even when the Lakers were down 10 points late in the fourth quarter there was a sense that Kobe was going to do something magical. 

 Then he scored his 50th point to make it a six point game on a shot that had The Informer reminiscing about 2006. Then he hit a pull up jumper from 15 ft. Then there was the fade-away three that had no business actually going in to pull the Lakers within one. 
We were all witnessing Kobe having a nam-like flashback to his “Black Mamba” days and somehow the Lakers were within reach of actually winning this game.  
And then the flashback became a reality.
Kobe drained a jumper from the top of the key to give the Lakers their first lead of the fourth quarter. He followed that up by making two more free throws to push his total to 60 and the Lakers lead to three. Finally, Kobe threw a perfect full court pass to Jordan Clarkson which ended with a dunk (making Kobe’s last NBA stat ever an assist #IsntThatIronic?)

 After that Byron Scott decided Kobe had done enough, so he substituted "White Mamba" Ryan Kelly into the game enabling Kobe the chance to walk off the court with just four seconds remaining in his career. Of course, this was done so the stunned/excited/joyous Staples' Center crowd could serenade our hero one last time with chants of "Kobe . . . Kobe . . .  Kobe!!!"
And man was it awesome.
Honestly, it was a performance that The Informer will never forget.
And in the end, there really is only one word to describe what took place in Los Angeles on April 13, 2016: “KOBE!!!”
#ThankYouKobe #LegendsNeverDie #MambaOut
(The Informer after the blog note –  In the spirit of never forgetting Kobe's great night, here are The Informer’s favorite tweets/reactions from last night’s Kobe game.)







And finally . . .
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