The last 3-point shot was hoisted by the Houston Rockets, missing the rim altogether. Kobe Bryant went high to snatch the rebound with one paw, slamming the ball loudly into the palm of his other, nodding his head in victory as he turned to walk off the court.
Fighting through the fits and starts of this still-young NBA season is not how Bryant wanted to make his return to the NBA, after tearing an Achilles tendon in 2013 then having knee surgery and missing almost all of last season.
Watch him do crossover dribbles and spin moves to try to shed the hair-shirt defense of Trevor Ariza, then settle for an off-balance 22-footer that bounces off the side of the hoop.
See him use pump fakes to create an opening and slice his way to the hoop, or try so hard to get free that he dribbles the ball off Francisco Garcia’s leg, has to chase it into the backcourt, then turn and launch a half-court heave before the shot clock runs out.
All of this for a 3-9 team marching toward nowhere.
Those who wonder why Bryant is going through this — why he won’t pull the ripcord and ask for a trade to New York, Chicago, one of Saturn’s rings or anyplace far, far away from the ash pile that has become the Lakers — have simply not been paying attention. Bryant is, as always, stubborn, proud and defiant. Instead of pursuing a sixth championship, he’s chasing respectability for a once-proud franchise. He is taking an honorable path toward the conclusion of a career that means more every night.
At 36, he already has pushed the envelope longer than most, from his debut in 1996 as a wildly precocious 18-year-old into his 19th season. His life in the league is as long as it was outside it.
When things are like this,
that’s when you really see if you have the competitive spirit or not.
– Kobe Bryant
Bryant doesn’t need to join Carmelo Anthony or anyone else to prove he’s a winner. Winning is all that every single-minded, obsessive bone in that body has ever been about, which is why he’s pushed it to the limits to come back at a time when others wouldn’t even have tried.
There was a time, in 2007, when Bryant publicly complained that he wanted to leave the Lakers, an organization that he didn’t feel was capable of putting him back into championship contention. But they made the right moves, returned to the NBA Finals three times and added two more notches to his title belt. Now, as his own sun sinks closer to the horizon, there are different priorities.
One is playing an entire iconic career with the franchise that has come to define him — like Jerry West and Magic Johnson before him with the Lakers, like Larry Bird and Bill Russell with the Celtics, Reggie Miller with the Pacers. Even if it means he’ll finish one behind Michael Jordan in the championship race, he won’t spend his final nights looking out of place, as Jordan did in the jersey of the Washington Wizards.
I sat at a lunch table in 2001 with a then 38-year-old Hakeem Olajuwon and asked him what was left, after 17 years in Houston, to take to Toronto. “There is nothing I cannot do like I used to,” he replied. “But I get some pains here and there, in my legs, maybe my back.”
I just nodded.
When I caught up to him six months later in Canada, Olajuwon was already on the injured list. He hadn’t played in in several weeks. When he first saw me across the gym, he nodded. “I had to try,” he said.
Certainly, there is a sadness in watching the sharp edges and the skills erode, the bones become more brittle, the tendons wear and tear and snap. But Bryant tries. Not to justify the two-year, $48.5 million contract the Lakers gave him a year ago. Not to realistically make a run at that sixth championship for his resume. But to go out on his own terms, whether that means shooting 10-for-28 on an ordinary Wednesday night in Houston, celebrating a meager two-game winning streak or tilting at windmills and insisting that what promises to be a difficult season can turn around.
“I find the beauty in it,” Bryant said. “It’s a challenging time, but if you’re a competitive person you have to find the beauty. Not just when things are going well …Those [times] are easy. When things are like this, that’s when you really see if you have the competitive spirit or not. You find the enjoyment in that trying to get better every day.”
Sometimes the winning is in how you look at it.
