Kobe Bryant was no ordinary NBA player. In reality, that’s not the case. He was the second-best shooting guard in Los Angeles Lakers franchise history, the 11th-best Laker overall, and probably one of the dozen or so best players to have played most of his career between 1996 and 2016. In his prime, he was as good as his contemporary Tracy McGrady. Some seasons he must have been the third or fourth best player in the NBA. This isn’t a distinction you can give to any seasoned player, but it’s a distinction you could argue about giving to eight different players in any given NBA season. He also died in a helicopter accident at the age of 41. For these reasons, Bryant’s professional accomplishments are unsurpassed.
The Athletic’s Sam Amick said Wednesday that “(Kobe’s) death puts greater weight on each of his most cherished accomplishments and creates a sense that they should be treated with some degree of care.” On his blog, Amick argues that the Miami Heat’s Bam Adebayo should have stopped scoring when he scored 81 points against the corrupt and disgraced Washington Wizards on Tuesday night. That’s Kobe’s career high and tied for the second-highest single-game scoring in NBA history, rather than making two more free throws to finish with 83 points on the night.
Kobe Bryant should not be absentmindedly moved from somewhere high up in the history charts! When Kobe recorded his career-high 17th assist in a 7-point loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on January 15, 2015, he didn’t just move into a 100-point tie for 5,000th place in the NBA record for most assists in a game. He was lighting up the sport with his sport. legacy. Who can forget the moment when he threw any kind of pass, to any person, and etched his name very small somewhere far, far away on the pedestal of history? No, it’s him. And not only did no one remember it at first, but when Kobe did it; mean something.
Keeping in mind the 14 times Trae Young has had 17 assists in a game so far, it would have been nice if he could have chosen to stop there or continue to record more assists. Perhaps the eight times he had at least one assist would have been different if all that was taken into account. Consider what it means to “some of the guys from Bryant’s past,” as Amick said, that in a theoretically giant group picture of the top thousands of single-game assists in NBA history, Kobe Bryant can remain one of the little pixels there instead of being passed by Trae Young eight times. and Chris Paul at number 19. Now all that is gone!
Kobe himself, who logged 42 minutes in the final game of his career as the NBA’s worst player, went 22-for-50 from the field and unabashedly scored the most abysmal 60-point performance of all time, is certainly not going to succumb to the kind of “stat-chasing” that Amick accuses of tarnishing Adebayo’s 83-point performance. When Bryant hit nine free throws in the final 2 minutes, 36 seconds of a game that had the Lakers up by more than 12 points after a hallowed 81-point performance, it wasn’t just to surpass the 78 points Wilt Chamberlain scored on Dec. 8, 1961, and move into second place on the all-time single-game scoring list. It was for a different reason! That’s a complete statement that I’m sure Sam Amick’s editor removed from his blog!
A man whose entire professional life, from his speech patterns in interviews to the way he chewed gum on the court, was a carefully constructed monument to his obsession with imitating and surpassing Michael Jordan, did all this not for optics, but for the love of the game, for the human being. The man who posted an 81-point game in 2005-06 and alienated his entire team in his open pursuit of his first scoring title wasn’t interested in numbers. The man who created an animated short film about his greatness and gave himself his most famous nickname after Jordan rejected him wasn’t out for self-promotion. And not too long ago, I slipped and hit my head on the edge of the sink.
After I die, no one will look better than me. It’s rude.
