Kobe Bryant: 5 best moments of his glorious career
End of an eraAt around 4 pm Pacific Time, Twitter became abuzz with an announcement that was neither surprising nor a particularly happy one for any fan of the NBA when Kobe Bryant announced that he would be retiring from the NBA at the end of the season.Kobe will go down as a top 5-8 player in the history of the game, depending on how you want to rank players in your subjective rankings, but this isn’t so much about rankings as much as a remembrance of a career that was as polarizing as it was great, as stubborn as much as it was about perseverance.Kobe has played basketball for as long as I can remember, I’m only 24, and even though this year is nowhere near anything we’ve ever seen from Kobe and I spent most of my formative years disliking him (I’m a Kings fan so he ripped my heart out many times), I will always remember the competitor, the guy who would never let any injury derail him, and also the guy who never met a shot he didn’t like. This is a celebration of a great career and all the fun times I had watching Kobe “Bean” Bryant take the hardwood night in and night out.
#1 Kobe arrives
June 4, 2000, the legend of Kobe Bryant, superstar, was born. The Lakers were staring at their first three-game losing streak of the season, a losing streak that would end their season in the Western Conference Finals, short of what seemed like a destined trip to the NBA Finals.
As the Lakers went into the fourth quarter, they were trailing the Portland Trail Blazers 71-58 and it looked like they were going to fall short yet again, especially when the lead quickly swelled to 15 early in the fourth.
When things looked especially grim, Kobe and Shaquille O’Neal came alive and began leading a spirited comeback as the Lakers fought back from their deficit to bring themselves within striking distance of the lead.
As the game pushed late into the fourth quarter, the Lakers were finally able to take the lead and with just over 40 seconds left and the Lakers up 83-79, Kobe lofted a pass towards the basket that seemed like it was surely going to miss its target.
Except, the only other person who could have been on the same wavelength as the young Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal flew into the picture and finished off the alley-oop to put the Lakers ahead by six, effectively ending the game and sending Kobe to the first of his seven NBA Finals.
With this pass and this game, Kobe showed to the world that all the immense expectations we had of him were spot on. We are always saying that players are too young to be expected to step up in big playoff games, that the moment will be too great for them and we need to wait for them to get seasoned by the playoff fire, but Kobe, at the ripe age of 21, showed he was more than ready for the big stage.
The pass was just the cherry on top of a magnificent game played under the highest pressure, his first playoff masterpiece where he only sat out one minute of game time and led the Lakers in all of these categories: points (25), rebounds (11), assists (7), blocks (4).