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He became famous with the numbers 8 and 24, which he wore on his back for twenty years. Kobe Bryant also has the number 81. The number of points he scored in an NBA game with the Toronto Raptors on January 22, 2006. Second best performance in basketball history.
When Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors (predecessors of today’s Golden State Warriors) in 1962, there was a general belief that the record would not only be matched, but not even approached. The duel against the New York Knicks was not captured by television cameras and there is no audio-visual record of it, which added a touch of magic to the whole thing.
The skeptics were not wrong – such a performance cannot be surpassed. Since 1963, only twice has a basketball player scored more than 70 points. When David Robinson scored 71 in 1994, the sports community even agreed that this was the highest one could realistically reach.
Twelve years later, Kobe Bryant came and prepared one of the most amazing evenings in the history of the NBA for the audience in Los Angeles. Arguably the best match of his two-decade career. What about the fact that the player’s preparation for the match was definitely not the most conscientious.
Burger, fries and a sore knee
It was not a heated duel, two mediocre teams met in the middle of the season. And Kobe celebrated his daughter Natalie’s third birthday the day before.
“I had a pepperoni pizza and grape lemonade. And my knee hurt so bad. On the day of the match, I had a hamburger and fries in the afternoon. Really. Well, and then I went to play. My knee hurt really bad, so I went to fight with it,” recounted the actor himself years later.
He was then 28 years old and already had three NBA titles. However, the Lakers of that time could definitely not be considered a team of stars. Together with him, Kwame Brown, Lamar Odom, Chris Mihm and Smush Parker got on the board. If you’re not a big basketball fan, you’ve probably never heard of them.
The match really didn’t promise to offer anything extraordinary in advance. Even actor Jack Nicholson missed him. The devoted Lakers fan, whose camera occupied the front row of the auditorium for years, had a daughter visiting that day, so he did not go to the stadium. He later regretted it very much.
Although journalists would certainly be interested in increased motivation, specific circumstances or an otherwise exceptional story, Bryant always just shrugged his shoulders when asked about what went into him at the time. “I played it over in my head many times. And I just don’t know, I don’t have an explanation for it. When a night like this comes, there’s always something magical, mysterious about it. To score so many points, you just can’t explain it,” said the American basketball player.
Who Was Kobe Bryant | Sports NW
- He was born on August 23, 1978 in Philadelphia (USA).
- He played 20 seasons in the NBA, all with the Los Angeles Lakers.
- He played in the playoff final series seven times, winning the league five times.
- He owns the numbers 8 and 24 – he played the first half of his career with the first, then decided to switch when he said he needed a fresh start.
- He won two gold medals for the USA in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
- In 2017, he produced a five-minute film Dear Basketballa filmed version of his story written for the web The Players’ Tribune. He won an Oscar for it in the category of best animated short. He received the statuette as the first ever professional athlete in history.
- On January 26, 2020, he died along with his daughter Gianna and seven other people in a helicopter crash in California.
One figure stands out from his performance statistics. He scored 55 of the 81 points in the second half. In the middle of the match, it did not look like a unique performance.
But in the third period, the opponent already led by eighteen points… And Bryant simply exploded. He scored 27 points in the third quarter and 28 in the final quarter. In the second act, he collected a total of 55 points, the entire rest of the Lakers’ roster 18. He destroyed Toronto all by himself. “We just watched him shoot all the time,” Raptors player Chris Bosh said.
At first glance, the weekday evening was somehow special for Bryant. After ten years of playing in the NBA, his grandmother came to watch his game live in the hall. “She never saw me play because her nerves just couldn’t handle it. But that time she flew to California and went to see me. The first time and the last time. She never went to a game again,” Bryant recounted.
Moreover, that day would have been the birthday of his grandfather, who had died a few years earlier. Could it be fate after all? In any case, the hall was clear – when their hero made two free throws forty seconds before the final buzzer, nineteen thousand people in the Staples Center chanted “MVP!” (most valuable/best player).
Although there are only seats in the stands, all the fans had been standing for long minutes at that time. This experience could not be absorbed sitting down.
“It was an incredible spectacle. A completely different level of basketball. I’ve seen a lot of great games, but I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Phil Jackson, the coach of the winners. He knew well what he was talking about, after all, in the legendary era of the Chicago Bulls, he managed Michael Jordan himself.
At the same time, it was he who, after Bryant scored 77 points, wanted to replace the player. He decided the team result and did not count Kobe’s points. But assistant Frank Hamblen stopped him. “You can’t do that. We have to wait until at least eighty. Otherwise people would go crazy,” he told Jackson.
Sixty point farewell
In twenty years, no one has matched the performance of the Lakers icon. The closest was Luka Dončić, who stopped at number 73 the year before.
Bryant himself, at the time roughly halfway through an amazing career, still reveled in the collective success after the magical evening. He won two golds at the Olympics as well as two NBA titles. When he said goodbye for good in April 2016, he prepared one last spectacular spectacle for the fans. As a 37-year-old veteran, he led the team to victory when he scored 60 points in his farewell.
Only ten players in basketball history have scored at least 60 points more than once. Kobe did it six times, including the last game of his career. “People can never understand how obsessed I am with winning,” is one of his famous sayings.
Photo: Profimedia.cz
A mural in Los Angeles commemorating the tragic death of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.
Unfortunately, he no longer personally remembers the twentieth anniversary of the memorable night when, after a fast food dinner with a sore knee, he wrote basketball history. In January 2020, he and his daughter were part of a helicopter accident that crashed in California. He was 41 years old.
Around Los Angeles today you can find dozens of murals and drawings with his likeness. Including the one where his little daughter is with him and they both have angel wings. They don’t forget one of the most important faces of basketball here.
“Kobe was one of the main figures of our sport. A mentor for male and female players. The importance he had for basketball cannot be described in words,” said former club president and five-time champion Magic Johnson.
The fourth leading scorer in NBA history and holder of many records will never be forgotten. Just like that January evening, when he turned an initially boring match into an experience of a lifetime for hundreds of thousands of people in the hall and on the screens.
