A Career In Hospice: An Early Eulogy Of Kobe Bryant

With the news that Kobe Bryant is expected to miss the rest of this season, we are drawing to the close of a very distinct era of basketball. For Kobe, I wouldn’t suspect that this is indeed the best of times, as Charles Dickens’ classic puts it. After 18 seasons, the “Mamba” may be ready to unlace his sneakers, in a metaphorical sense of course.

Half of his life has been dedicated to playing at an elite level in the NBA, a lot to ask a recent high school graduate. He wouldn’t be the last to enter the league a wide-eyed high school star, who was given worshipful treatment at the end of his high school career only to enter into the league and realize they needed to work. Some fizzled under that pressure, which is a lot of pressure to have.

Not Kobe. He loved that pressure.

I have a love/hate relationship with Kobe, stemming back to the days when he used to go toe-to-toe with Tracy McGrady, another supreme scorer in the league. My twin brother is a huge Kobe fan; probably so much that if the Lakers were to ever trade him, he’d follow Kobe to the next team and go out and buy his jersey.

That was what I was confronted with growing up, having to deal with my brother always talk about his stats, always talk about the way he won and always talk about how he hit big shots. Anyone who is anti-authoritarian would react the way that I did, which is to recoil at his name.

But I also couldn’t say much. Kobe’s pedigree speaks for himself. He has won five championships. The first thing that detractors run to is the fact that he had great teams. That argument always seems to strike me as dull, because it truly is a lazy argument. Of course he has had good teams. Everyone has had good teams. At least, the stars that people talk about.

The NBA is an elite basketball league precisely because one man cannot do it on his own. Teams have to be phenomenal to win, which is why we are so enamored with the San Antonio Spurs.

Yes, but he had Shaquille O’Neal and Pau Gasol. But nobody ever makes this argument with Magic Johnson, who had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Nor do they make this argument for Larry Bird, who had Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. And I think it is safe to say that Shaq needed Kobe just as much as Kobe needed Shaq.

Two nights ago, the league celebrated a huge accomplishment with Klay Thompson breaking the NBA record for most points scored in a quarter. How does a guy go about scoring 37 points? The Miami Heat are averaging 40 points per game in the second half of the last five games. It made think about the time Kobe scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors. 81!

His scoring ability is unlike anybody I have ever seen and quite possibly will ever see again. The only other scorer that even comes close right now is Kevin Durant.

But people conveniently forget how well-rounded Kobe Bryant was. Forget about what type of player he has been now. We know how he has been. He is old, so he couldn’t give anything on defense. His DRPM (Defensive Real Plus-Minus) was -3.07, which is 101st in the league.

Rather than following players closely over screens he went underneath, tried to play passing lanes for steals and getting caught a lot.

His offense hasn’t been that much better. He is averaging 22.3 points per game while shooting 20.4 shots per game. Of course, much of those shots haven’t been shots that have been taken to the basket. Out of the 713 shots that he has taken this season, 604 shots were jump shots. That is an unreal amount of shots to take.

It is obvious that the further one shoots from the basket, the lesser the player’s shooting percentage. But it hasn’t been possible for Kobe to take the ball to the basket anymore. He doesn’t have the spring he used to.

In keeping with this “struggle” motif, the Lakers have struggled a lot this season as well, leading many to doubt Kobe’s presence on the floor over against his absence. Here is an example:

This is fair, because Kobe hasn’t been very good at all. But I have heard too often the past few years that Kobe Bryant has tarnished his legacy. This is the idea that I cannot get behind. His legacy is wrapped up in the many times that he has come through in the clutch. Like this:

Or this:

There’s plenty more where that came from. In big moments, Kobe never shied away. And for some reason, this affected the way I viewed Kobe. My loathing of the player turned into an appreciation of who he has been for nearly two decades.

So as we see the decline of a player who called out the NBA himself, let us not turn to the countless articles that have defamed him in the past few years. That would be unfair. His body has given out almost completely.

As for me, I’ll remember him as the best player that I ever saw with my young eyes.

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