Los Angeles Lakers: Kobe Bryant is this team’s guardian angel

The Los Angeles Lakers have seemingly caught every bit of luck thrown their way. Or perhaps they’re being aided by a different force: Kobe Bryant.

Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant is still very much alive.

Immortality was oft attributed to the snake in the anecdotes of numerous ancient mythos’ – the creature was the ultimate embodiment of continuous rebirth for its sloughing process in which it would shed its outer coating and reemerge as a newly incarnated version of itself.

Thus, dead skin cells recently discarded, the snake was rejuvenated into an entirely different light, a fully-fledged sentient being free from the bondage and weight of its past existence.

Kobe Bryant was likened to a snake during his playing career – the black mamba to be exact, for ample reasons akin to the ones described above – namely, insatiable durability and a never-die winning attitude.

But persistence is not the only quality the snake is known for, and the same can be said for Kobe.

He was a killer, a seething warrior with a terminator mindset of seeking and destroying any opponents that dared intercept his path. He was calculative, a cold-blooded mastermind behind an array of basketball’s most potent strategic chess moves. And he was vengeful – a Jordan-esque “I took it personal” mentality accompanied him for the breadth of his career, and any who crossed him the wrong way became incumbent targets on his hit list.

But alas, Bryant was a human being, and unfortunately, the ticking time bomb of death that awaits all who walk the Earth presented itself far too early in his journey.

That doesn’t mean the Mamba is extinct though. As said, Kobe Bryant doubled down as one of the world’s most dangerous predators during the course of his life. His death stung the world with as much venom as a bite from the snake itself.

This death though was unlike any other we’ve seen before. In fact, it wasn’t a death at all. For Bryant was a snake, and this was merely his slough.

The Rebirth

“So where is Kobe?” you might ask. Well, look no further than the team that transformed him into the “Mamba”, that made the house known as the Staples Center home, and that served as the cannonball tunnel for the eruption of Kobe’s birthright greatness.

The Los Angeles Lakers. That’s where.

Kobe Bryant is with this team. He has been ever since he left them in the physical, and if the circumstances that have befallen upon these Lakers haven’t provided any indication of that sentiment thus far, then Anthony Davis‘ 3-point dagger into the heart of the Denver Nuggets to close Game 2 was the nail in that figurative coffin.

https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1307866283451412486?s=20

The word coffin here is used purposefully in a non-literal sense because Kobe and this team are alive and well.

There’s just something magical brewing about the group that LA’s remaining team is fielding on a bi-nightly basis. It’s been evident since games resumed in the bubble nearly two months ago.

Take Kyle Kuzma’s surprise game-clinching three over the Nuggets in their regular-season matchup to mark his first career shot of the sort. Or the Lakers’ bludgeoning of Portland’s defense on their way to a near 81-point (they scored 80) first half on Mamba day.

And the amount of times the numbers 8 and 24 have appeared in succession during their games is surely indicative of a benevolent presence.

Oh, and they haven’t lost yet when they’ve donned their commemorative “Mamba” jerseys, a streak which Davis kept intact by a bare thread Sunday night.

Davis himself immediately turned towards his teammates and screamed “Kobe!” after splashing home the jumper in impeccable movie fashion. Frank Vogel made a similar allusion, claiming “that’s a shot Kobe Bryant would hit” in the post-game presser. Notice a persisting theme here?

The bucket was the perfect cap to an unbelievable 22-point second-half showing from the First-team All-NBA honoree. It came just after a halftime show segment in which Charles Barkley denounced Davis’ mental fortitude in comparison to Bryant, bashing him for lacking a “killer mentality” within his inner psyche.

One would like to think Bryant had something to do with the big man’s ferocious outburst shortly thereafter.

It seems as if Kobe has had some drawing power in a bit of everything the Lakers have done up to this point, which is an idea the team itself has no problem wholeheartedly embracing.

Lebron James spoke candidly on honoring Bryant’s legacy following a second-round win over the Houston Rockets, saying:

"“At the end of the day, we just hope we make him and his family proud, and that’s all it’s about.”"

Well if they keep winning, there’s no doubt that their efforts will receive the Mamba stamp of approval. And he’ll be right there to guide them along their journey, as his own rebirth will be fully manifested with another title run for the purple and gold.

Bryant’s looped quote in his famed commercial with Kanye West comes squarely to mind here: “different animal, same beast.”

This current Lakers team is undoubtedly a different animal than the ones Kobe Bryant starred for in year’s past. But the same beast that is Bryant’s spirit continues to fuel them, and with that subsistence as their guide and protective armor, they’ll be virtually unstoppable.