The Day The NBA Stood Still

today is january 26 2021 the one-year anniversary of the day the nba stood still good afternoon from new york we're coming on the air with breaking news very sad news to tell the sports world the la times is reporting that retired los angeles lakers basketball star kobe bryant has been killed in a helicopter crash this was a massive blow to the nba world and just the world in general the impact that kobe had on the players in the league his fans and especially the people who knew him cannot be overstated and today i wanted to remember kobe not just the tragedy but the life that kobe lived his nba career and his impact on others and talk about how all of that impact was so significant that his death made the nba world stand completely still [Music] kobe and his youth was the epitome of the word cocky and this was a source of criticism for him back then but the thing is while maybe it was egotistical and arrogant to some was kobe's attitude really cocky if he went out and accomplished everything that he said that he would my favorite kobe quote spells this out perfectly when you make a choice and say come hell or high water i am going to be this then you should not be surprised when you are that when kobe was young he decided what he was going to be and was unapologetic about getting there with an indescribable tenacity and then when he proved himself right he was not surprised because he had already decided this is what would happen and then he made that so kobe was never one to shy away from the moment and the attention as he proved a million times over in his career after being touted as the best high school basketball player of all time to some kobe had to decide if he wanted to play college or jump right up to the highest level as a 17 year old kid and kobe cocky as always made that decision ah kobe bryant i've decided to take my talent to uh no i have decided to skip college and take my talents in mba kobe's nba career did not get off to a blazing start he was a bench player who only got about 15 minutes per game but kobe being the guy that he was at that age still found a way to steal the spotlight to the point where his teammates started calling him showboat and he really leaned into that persona by participating in the dunk contest at just 18 years of age so kobe will dunk and then so will the other two then they'll do it one more time [Applause] his rookie season however ended on a down note that would define his career after playing just 13 minutes per game in the playoffs suddenly when the lakers were down 3-1 to the utah jazz they gave kobe the opportunity to close out the game and it didn't go very drives pulled well shot on the way no good rebounds fake stock away cross court left open closing three another air ball he's just [Applause] seven seconds but what matters is that in this game what kobe showed is the confidence to take those shots and after airball after air ball after airball kobe didn't hesitate to come up the court and shoot it again utah game everybody talks about those air balls i wasn't mad at you that's why i was the first one to come grab you and say hey i know everybody's laughing and giggling on that but one day people will fear you at the end of the game but ending that season on a low note or not there was still immense hype around kobe and the player that he could be this is my man this my man this is showboat we call him showboat but y'all know him as kobe bryant this is my main man but this kid right here mark my words now and i said this earlier in the season it's going to be unbelievable i mean i'm not saying that because you're here i i see him every day i see him every day and practice i see how this kid works i see how he after practice how he's still in the gym before practice i know he goes to pacific palisades and shooting their gym after school he's just a tremendous talent in a second year kobe was given more opportunity on the lakers while he didn't earn the start yet he did earn a six-man role where he would average 15 per game and 18 a game before the all-star break and that 18 at the age of 19 combined with kobe's incredible popularity not only landed him a spot in the all-star game but a starting spot in the west making him the youngest starter in all-star game history and kobe would come to play in that all-star game where matched up against michael jordan he would put up 18 points in 22 minutes and he scored those 18 points in the way you'd expect someone nicknamed showboat to do unfortunately however the 98 season wouldn't be too pleasant for the lakers overall who featuring one of the league's premier players of shaquille o'neal would once again fall short to the utah jazz in the playoffs this time in the conference finals which would further eat at the team and shaq in particular in the 99th season the lakers would undergo some changes nick van exel would leave the team for the nuggets and eddie jones would be traded to the charlotte hornets freeing up plenty of shooting guard minutes for kobe allowing him to start where he would average 20 points per game in a lockout season however these changes would not help the lakers overall as their win percentage saw a dip as did their defense and this would show itself in the 99 playoffs where they would get swept by the eventual champion san antonio spurs leading to even more frustration from kobe and shaquille o'neal frustration from not only not meeting the mark but also seeing the potential that there was between these two that was not being delivered on luckily however the lakers would make an addition to really unlock that potential in the 99 offseason and no it was not a player it was the zen master himself phil jackson the legendary coach who helped michael and scotty win six was here to help shaq and the quote-unquote next michael jordan win some themselves the addition of phil as well as another year of development for a now 21 year old kobe made the lakers a powerhouse the team won 67 games shaq won mvp kobe made his second all-star appearance and they took care of business in the playoffs round one they would have the kings a team the lakers would have a notable battle with later that series would go very well for kobe who would average 28 points alongside shaq's 29-17 round two they made very short work of the jason kidd's sons within the conference finals they had an interesting matchup the portland trailblazers who had a team made up of a bunch of really good players no standout superstar caliber guy but it was a deep team that played basketball the right way which led them to 59 wins in a top five offense and defense this series would come down to a close game seven the lakers had a minor lead to close the game out and needed one more bucket to seal this series and earn a finals appearance and then kobe with the greatest perimeter defensive player of all time at least at that point on him well you know what he did [Applause] kobe was heading to his first finals appearance where he and the lakers would meet the indiana pacers with michael jordan's bulls out of the way reggie miller and the indiana pacers were finally able to break out of the eastern conference unfortunately for them though going into this series there was very little reason to believe that this team could actually beat the lakers they didn't have anyone who could guard kobe and they especially did not have anyone that could guard shaq but the pacers could do something to give them a chance and that was to intentionally injure kobe jalen rose when contesting a mid-range jumper from kobe in game 2 intentionally slid his foot under his landing space which led to an injury as a result of this injury kobe played pretty damn bad in this series as a whole statistically speaking averaging 15 a game on garbage splits when previously in the playoffs he was averaging 23 on good splits however this injury and the context it gives to this series is often left out of the discussion from people who would like to perpetuate the narrative that kobe was just carried by shaq but when you remove the game 2 that he had where he played just 8 minutes he still averages 19 just not on the best efficiency but more importantly than that in game 4 shaq fouled out in overtime with this being on indiana's home court so with a chance to take a 3-1 lead which at this point would guarantee a win in the finals the lakers were without their best player but that would not matter as kobe would proceed to carry the lakers offense in overtime it will be up to kobe bryant and company to do it without o'neal oh and what a start for kobe advantage under a minute and a half to play in overtime kobe pulls up it's again into the lane tough shot guess who and after taking a 3-1 lead the lakers would win the series meaning kobe just got his first ring as did shaquille o'neal unfortunately however winning this ring gave the two completely different mindsets to kobe this was only more motivation to get better to shaq now that he had achieved this goal it was time to chill one thing i know i got i know i got a guy that's going to be ready so i met a lot of times i didn't come in the camera ready because that's just how i got down because my thing is i don't need to get ready for dunking right i need to get ready for i don't need to get i'll get ready when i get ready so because i had you i was able to just chill out into something yeah that's what yo that's what pissed me off that that was it right there that was listen i got beat up i got a hacker shack i was tired man i ain't doing no work this was the main source of the beef between these two that started here and would only worsen with time kobe's drive to improve after that first ring really showed itself in the 2001 season in his sit down with shaq kobe said his mindset in game 4 versus the pacers where he had that performance was that he wanted to win that one because of the work that shaq did for it on top of his own desires well you know i knew how much it meant to you right now because brothers you don't let you don't let your brother down it wasn't my time yet this championship was yours right because you had worked hard to get us to this point right for your whole career in orlando and all the disappointments and here you are and it's my responsibility to pick that up but 2001 yeah it was officially kobe time kobe before this was a hell of a player but this was the first year that he was a bona fide superstar and a [ __ ] killer [Applause] he's underneath [Applause] kobe's right to the top alongside shaq still being the dominant player he was made this duo something to fear combining for an average of 57 points per game as you can imagine the lakers were very good once more now it didn't show as much this time in the regular season as the lakers actually won 11 less games that year however this team was ridiculous in the playoffs losing a grand total of one yes one game in the entirety of the playoffs with kobe and shaq averaging 59.8 points in the playoffs as a duo 29.4 for kobe and 30.4 for shaq truly the greatest duo of all time at the very least at their peaks the 2002 season was more of the same kobe and shaq were great and there was still some underlying drama but for the most part the team was winning so things were not getting too bad however things didn't go as smoothly as they did in 2001 for sure as while the first two rounds were not all that difficult for the lakers who swept the blazers in round one and gentlemen swept the spurs in round two they ran into a difficult spot with the sacramento kings this would go down as one of the best playoff series of all time as well as probably the most controversial of all time this king's team played very well as a unit they didn't beat the lakers in the overall talent department because well no team in the league could beat them there but they played amazing as a team and were very deep chris webber was one of the most underrated players ever in my opinion he was a walking bucket as well as an amazing playmaker for a four pager storyakovich was one of the best shooters of the early 2000s mike bibby was a solid all-around point guard doug christie was a great defender and a solid offensive player he could score at a decent rate and was a good passer vlade divock was saw it all around and yet another playmaker on this team as a center and bobby jackson and hito turkalu were both really good bench scorers and shooters that was a lot of names that i just said and when you add to it that practically everyone on this team was a good and willing passer that made this one of the best offensive teams in the league as well as a solid defense with great communication so as a result while the lakers were the favorite the kings were expected to put up a fight and they did the series went seven games in favor of the los angeles lakers and to many it should have gone the other way because this series had a good handful of questionable calls the most egregious one being this inbound play where kobe basically just trucks mike bibby with no whistle blown but series rigged or at the very least poorly officiated or not the lakers got by this team and waiting for them in the finals was the 02 new jersey nets who sucked like the 2002 eastern conference was pathetically weak so the conference finals was the real fight while in the finals this series was an easy sweep where shaq won a rather easy finals mvp averaging 36 points per game because he was being guarded by todd matt mccaul mcclock mccoach i don't [ __ ] know his nickname was big mac like that was obviously not going to work the next year for kobe and the lakers is one that is often ignored within the context of this duo and this team like it seems like people jump from the three-peat to 2004 but fun fact uh 2002 and 2004 has a year in between it it's called 2003 mind blowing i know this season would actually really start the divide between kobe and shaq on the court previous to this their beef was mostly off of the court but to start this year shaq was out with an injury that he was managing on quote unquote company time so gradually the offense started shifting more into kobe's favor and there was a period of time where he just went absolutely ballistic kobe averaged over 44 points per game in a nine game stretch on incredible efficiency meanwhile shaq wasn't playing as well as in years past and with kobe getting all of the media's attention and praise according to phil jackson they were starting to lose him phil calls me to his office goes hey you know we're starting to lose the big fellow what do you mean well he's not getting the attention you know this this 40-point streak is starting to kind of take away his fire to prove something right so i need you to start dialing it back i'm like what he says we're going to lose him and we need them in june okay all right so now there was a power and balance between the two which there always was but it really showed itself this year and it impacted this team's title hopes as they would lose in the second round of the san antonio spurs as tim duncan was in the midst of pulling off one of the greatest carry jobs in nba history as he averaged 28 11 and 5 and played great defense on shaq holding him to just 25 points per game meanwhile kobe played well averaging 32 but with shaq not being the dominant force that he was in the past few years it just simply was not enough so now the lakers weren't looking all that great and their solution was trying to build a super team and just to be clear super team is in quotes in this script because they added gary payton and carl malone in free agency which would have made them a super team a few years ago but now they were both basically on their way to a retirement home but this was a good team and as a result they found their way back to the finals where this time around they would beat the spurs in the second round then the lakers would meet the 2004 pistons see this team really was the perfect matchup for the lakers in retrospect similar to the o2 kings and the 2000 blazers the best way to give this duo issues was not to by out talenting them because that was impossible there wasn't a team in the league that was going to have more talent than the lakers the only problem lakers had was how much they leaned on this duo and this talent rather than the team as a whole the way the pistons took down the powerhouse lakers was they were a team when the lakers at that point really were not the duo of kobe and shaq self-destructed and because the lakers were basically nothing without those two we saw the pistons take advantage unfortunately however as good as the pistons did play the main thing to blame for this loss was that self-destruction because kobe and shacks off of the cord beef started to bleed onto the court in this series they just stopped playing together as a duo they were both playing but they were playing for themselves and the issues with these two really started to reach their breaking point in that series pair that with one of the greatest defenses in league history and you had a recipe for disaster now the fallout from this series was pretty drastic underlying all this turmoil between kobe and shaq was also shaq's new contract which with him being 31 having injury and weight issues beef with their young superstar and with them losing an embarrassing fashion in the finals the writing was on the wall for shaq to be headed elsewhere and he did he was sent to the miami heat and now kobe was a solo act in los angeles the post shack period in kobe's career was certainly an interesting one a time of not much winning but a whole lot of buckets [Music] in the 2005 season the lakers were real bad on top of shaq leaving phil jackson left as he always had a knack for dipping out when things got bad and then showing up right as they got good again this roster on paper wasn't all too bad lamar odom was a very good power forward and one of the most underrated players of his generation quran butler was a solid score chucky atkins was a respectable point guard and chris mim was a passable center it wasn't a good team but with kobe being as good as he was it should have been okay enough but they had injury issues kobe missed nearly 20 games as did lamar odom and their coaching situation was real bad to the point where the coach they went into the season with was replaced with an even worse coach on top of all of that the western conference was incredibly deep so the team won just 34 games with the silver lining being that they landed andrew bynum in the lottery next season though phil jackson came back to the team and kobe decided to go thermonuclear in the scoring department he averaged 35 points per game winning the scoring title oh yeah and he also did this falling behind even further cody baseline got it again just yo-yo in the dribble and stops on the top of the key they're giving him the ball to see if he can add to it that's gonna have to play in the third he pulls up for a three yes four kobe again yes sir nobody helping right now defensively so he'll take the 15 foot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now as many buckets as kobe got that year and don't get me wrong it was a lot it wasn't translating all that much to team success while the lakers were certainly better than they were last year 45 wins was still not an impressive feat now this was not kobe's fault once more the talent around him was not ideal and the west was a bloodbath as always but the lakers did at least make a playoff spot this time around where they faced the phoenix suns where kobe famously did this but also the lakers not so famously did this right now it is all about the phoenix suns they've come back from a 3-1 deficit and beating the lakers in the first round and to make this loss even more painful to kobe after blowing a 3-1 lead after this he had to watch shaquille o'neal win his fourth ring from his couch 2007 came around and was more of the same kobe won another scoring title the lakers were a lower seed team again and they lost in the first round to the suns again as a result things got kind of ugly in los angeles well if you don't know how you can move forward in that situation you're still under contract with them are you saying right here on this show that you want to be traded yeah i would like to be traded yeah there's no there's no infants or what's about it it's not a situation where what what what what you know i know before you reportedly said that you would like them to get jerry west back are you saying now emphatically regardless of what they've done you want out of los angeles yeah i'm like betrayed to come to that conclusion you know there's no other there's no other there's no other alternative three years removed from the shack trade the lakers had not found any real success despite having arguably the best player in the nba and that player was far from happy about this while there was a narrative at the time that all kobe cared about was scoring couldn't pass the ball was always after his all that stuff you've heard before in reality kobe prioritized winning overall and after he came to the conclusion that he wasn't going to be able to do that in los angeles he asked out publicly and kobe was shocked around the league as a result but kobe had all the power because he had a no trade clause in his contract he would have to approve of what team he got traded to as well as what he was traded for kobe didn't want to be traded for everything the opposing team had because he'd just be in a similar situation to los angeles there was a trade lined up with the pistons that he ended up turning down because he had no desire to play in detroit who can blame him then there was a deal with the bulls that he turned down because he felt the bulls were giving up too much and he'd just be in a similar situation and i feel a need to interject here real quick because man does that kill me kobe is my favorite player of all time and i'm a chicago bulls fan so that just kills me that's that hypothetical is my dream and that ain't happen anyways the point is kobe wanted out but luckily because of kobe's stinginess he actually was not traded he made trading him so difficult for the lakers that they didn't and asking for this trade actually helped him because it pushed the lakers management to be more aggressive about building around him in the offseason they brought back derrick fisher in free agency and traded for trevor ariza and andrew bynum took a leap in his third year that made him one of the better centers in the nba this led to the lakers starting the year off very well on pace for 50 wins by the trade deadline however kobe still wasn't exactly thrilled about the situation in la while the team was better he was still the lone star in town but one of the biggest robberies in nba history would make up for that spanish treasure arrives on the shores of los angeles last little nugget simply the biggest nba in season trade so far this year as the lakers acquired talented big man pal gasol from the grizzlies now this return actually ended up being good for memphis in the long run because powe's brother mark ended up being pretty damn good unbeknownst to anybody at the time but at the time him and a bunch of scrubs and what would end up being two very late first round picks it was definitely a steal and this also meant that kobe finally had a star teammate for the first time since shaq which would make his life a whole lot easier what's your reaction to the trade i think it's uh yeah i think it shows a great deal of commitment from the organization um and i think it's a uh it's a great step while powell was not some unbelievable talent or even a superstar caliber player he was just a very good player and that was all that kobe really needed and powe's debut for the lakers he had 24 12 and four on 10 for 15 shooting while kobe had just six points on three for 13 shooting easily the worst game he had had in years and it didn't matter even though the nets team that they were playing wasn't very good the fact that kobe could score six points and the team could still win seemed like a miracle in comparison of the past few years in fact in every game between the shack trade and the pow trade the lowest amount of points kobe had scored in a win was eight and that was only a win because the nuggets were playing without carmelo anthony and that team was basically useless without him kobe how nice feeling is it to know that you can score six points and still have a victory come out you have no idea you know just make the game so much easier you know we had some weapons before now we just added a huge one to the team you know we get big bind them back because it's you know there's a god so with gasal on this team elevating the lakers to a new level kobe finally won that elusive mvp award but he was more interested in the more elusive first championship without shaq over the years since that relationship had boiled over and shaq won one without him the pressure was on kobe to win without shaquille o'neal it was that pressure that led to him asking out in the first place but now kobe had the team he had the mvp and it was time for him to prove himself and as we know kobe was always up for the challenge so the 2008 playoffs come around first round the lakers beat the nuggets easily not even worth mentioning in the second round they match up with a very interesting team in the utah jazz led by the offensive duo of daron williams and carlos boozer the defensive mastermind andre karalinko the spacing from stretch five memino kerr as well as kyle korver this team was number one on offense and twelfth and defense and they were coached by the legendary head coach jerry sloan so this team was a threat the lakers had the clear-cut best player but the jazz were deeper and as a result this was a close series that easily could have gone to seven but luckily kobe really showed up in this series to make sure it didn't go that way 33 7-7 on 63 true shooting against one of the better defensive players of his generation the guy took care of business then they get to the western conference finals where the team that was waiting for them was the defending champion san antonio spurs led by tim duncan in the guard tandem of manoj nobly and tony parker as well as a supporting cast that was pretty solid with a lockdown defender and bruce bowen and of course this team was coached by greg popovich meaning this was also a matchup of the two greatest coaches of all time and being that this team won a championship last year after getting through a tough western conference you would expect this to be a close series but no it wasn't i was setting you guys up this series was a gentleman's sweep as for why well kobe played great again on offense and on defense he gave manu fitz as he only shot 36 from the field and averaged just 12 points after averaging 20 in the regular season so the liquors took care of business and were now headed to the finals and waiting for them was a hell of a squad the 2007 offseason was quite an eventful one for the nba and the team that ended up being the biggest story of that offseason was the boston celtics after nearly a decade of the celtics riding the coattails of paul pierce while not giving him a even decent supporting cast the celtics actually did something well actually more accurately the celtics did basically everything first the team traded for ray allen who had spent the past few years on a very not so good seattle supersonics team with rey being a perennial all-star and at that point the greatest shooter of all time this was already a huge get in itself but on top of that they also traded for kevin [ __ ] garnett fun fact kevin garnett's middle name is actually [ __ ] that wasn't just me trying to put on some emphasis here his name is literally kevin [ __ ] garnett please do not fact check that so now the celtics suddenly went from paul pierce and wally zerbiak to paul pierce ray allen and kevin garnett as a result of all these moves the seeds went from a record of 24 and 58 to 66 and 16. there were the very clear-cut favorites that's not saying the lakers had no chance because they unquestionably did but the general perception here was that yeah the lakers are good but the celtics are probably winning this one perhaps what made this matchup more interesting however is the history that these two franchises had lakers versus celtics is easily the greatest rivalry in the nba and arguably the biggest in sports but when you think of kobe's match-ups on the largest stage previous to this there is no historical context to add more weight to the potential win or loss unless you want to count the 04 pistons because of the bad boy pistons in the showtime lakers in the 80s but i wouldn't and i don't think anyone was back then either so what kobe was heading into was bigger than himself it now wasn't just him and his team trying to win a championship it was now yet another chapter in a six to seven decade long rivalry games one and two on the celtics home court went as expected which is to say that the lakers put up a fight but the celtics showed themselves to be the better team in those games kobe did not shoot particularly well but being that the celtics had the best defense in the league his poor efficiency wasn't that much of a shock game three was a bounce back for kobe and the lakers as he put up 36 and seven on 12 or 20 shooting and the lakers won this one in a defensive affair where each score ended up being in the 80s for both teams but unfortunately for game four kobe would follow his best game of the series with easily his worst as he put up only 17 points alongside 10 assists on 6 for 19 shooting and sadly this lakers core around kobe without bynum because he was gone for the playoffs just simply could not compensate for this poor performance by him so the lakers found themselves in a three to one deficit which as i said earlier to that point meant a guaranteed win in the finals and that record would continue as while kobe and the lakers had a bounce back in game five the siege blew them out of the water in game six winning by 39 as kobe shot just 7 for 22. the lakers put up a fight but boston was clearly better and kobe's poor shooting knights did not help that kobe you won the mvp you led the team to the finals how do you characterize the season well i mean the goal was to win a championship you know it wasn't to win mvp or anything like that to win a championship so you know from that aspect we fell i think it was about a year ago i think i asked you about the celtics lakers thing he said you really it's really never you know you've only seen it on tv now you've been through it sort of uh can you talk about what it was like just the the boston la thing and playing the celtics in the championship it sucks so naturally fresh off of this loss with kobe being the man that he was he walked into next season with even more determination and motivation than before this loss just added more fuel to his fire the lakers this year won a whopping 65 games benefiting from a full season with gasol and just overall internal improvement this lakers team made themselves from a year ago look like garbage in comparison round one versus the jazz went by easily then in the second round they had an interesting matchup versus the rockets which is seldom talked about for some reason this series was weird as hell bynum and fischer played like [ __ ] which was probably the main reason why this series was even close but the two biggest players as well as lamar odom played really well and yet a team with a starting lineup of aaron brooks shane battier meta world peace ron artest of the time louis scola and a combination of yao ming for three games and chuck hayes for four games as the starting center this was a seven game series in this series really the only thing that gets talked about was the famous back and forth between kobe and artest but this series really had no business going to seven games like a team whose leading scorer for the series is aaron brooks pushed this lakers team to seven games which is out of this world and i don't know why this has brought up more but for the conference finals lakers get the nuggets who with chauntey billups in place of alan iverson had a resurgence and this series ended up being just a back and forth between kobe and melo seeing who could hit the prettiest mid-range jump shot and kobe prevailed on that one meaning the lakers were headed to the finals once more where they could now as a much better team with andrew bynum healthy and the internal improvement could get their revenge on the celtics but um they played the magic see unfortunately kg got injured in the first round of the playoffs which led to the celtics losing to dwight howard's magic despite their best efforts so getting that sweet taste of revenge would not be coming for kobe quite yet but he would have an opportunity to finally shut up those critics who said that he could not win without shaq and he would shut them up because for the most part this magic team wasn't all that difficult of a match-up this was the best defense in the league in a respectable offense but this team just did not have enough experience nor the best player in the series so it ended in five games kobe averaged 32 6 and 7 and walked away with his first finals mvp yeah kobe how's this different from your previous three rings well i just don't have to hear that criticism that idiotic criticism anymore that's the biggest thing i don't have to hear that stuff anymore but kobe of course was not all that satisfied with this if you remember back to the offseason kobe had after winning his first ring in 2000 the guy was never one to get his ring and then feel like the job's just completely over on top of his natural desire to win multiple championships he also had unfinished business with the team that bested him the year before and wasting no time he'd get that chance at revenge in the following season the lakers were great again in 2010 not as successful record wise as last year but they were still the favorite in the conference and in the western conference playoffs they proved this by taking care of the young okc thunder the consistently mediocre utah jazz and the phoenix suns in the conference finals and waiting for the lakers this time around would of course be the boss and celtics in the 2010 nba finals kevin garnett was back albeit as a lesser version as kg was not quite the same after his injury in 2009 but still a very good player but as a result they got past the magic to get another shot at the championship unfortunately however for the seas kobe was not going to let that happen see the magic series win was satisfying but it wouldn't be as satisfying as taking down the celtics with all of the history that these two organizations had and the fact that he had lost to them in the finals in 2008. this series would go down as one of the better in league history with it going to seven games they split the first four games each taking one on the opposing court and in game five the celtics took the series lead game fives are typically considered to be the most pivotal in a series because generally speaking most close teams come out 2-2 and game 5 is where you determine who's really going to win the series because whoever wins game 5 only has to win one of the next two meanwhile the team that's down has to win both of the next two the room for error drastically increases once you have that 3-2 lead but in game 6 the lakers killed the celtics not with their offense if anything the lakers had a below average offensive knight but the defense held the celtics to just 67 points in total on 33 shooting an absolute lockdown performance so now we get to a game seven the best thing in basketball this game would be a [ __ ] battle as it usually was for these two teams this was a defensive affair and then some the lakers shot just 33 from the field and the celtics shot just 41 as for how the lakers made up for that deficit and efficiency well they out rebounded the celtics kobe had shot like crap in this game six for 24 but he grabbed 15 rebounds including four offensive boards pow had 19 rebounds in total and nine of them were offensive so even though they could not make their damn shots they had plenty of second chance opportunities the lakers ended up getting 12 more shots in this game as a result and they would win this game despite that incredible inefficiency meaning kobe and the lakers had toppled the celtics and kobe had gotten his fifth ring and second finals mvp and well more importantly we know what it means as a team but what about individually for you he's got one more to shaq so you could take that to the bank do you think i was pissed when you got number five of course you were oh no doubt i told my house no doubt i'm glad you did i went crazy because when i got four you got four i was like hey i got four he got four straight but you got that fifth one hey hold on you said i just wanted to get one more absolutely absolutely tv yeah i said you know what nothing you can do about it either after this series though there was the pressure to three-peat a pressure that the lakers would not live up to as they would lose 4-0 to the eventual champion dallas mavericks in the playoffs in 2011 and to add to that downward trend phil jackson decided to retire which meant they were now coached by mike brown who was well not good the lakers were even worse in 2012 and they lost in the second round again this time to the okc thunder and the dire situation in los angeles became increasingly clear this corey that had won two championships was just not as good anymore the supporting pieces had fallen off the team needed to make some big changes to get back to the highest level and those changes would be training for both dwight howard and steve nash with dwight at the time being a top 10 player and nash being somewhat of a shell of his former self but clearly still pretty damn good doing this after the team was screwed out of landing chris paul something that keeps lakers fans up at night to this day but this team was expected to be very good it was being touted as a super team kobe and dwight alongside with gasal and freaking steve nash as your fourth best player that is an easy recipe for success but well actually it wasn't for a variety of reasons it was a recipe for disaster nash and dwight howard had injuries dwight and gasal was an awkward fit because really this was two centers playing together the nba just had not made it to that point in its evolution where they realized that was not a good thing and these injuries on top of kobe's mentality clashing with dwight's more soft and reserved not his intense persona led to this team not being very good despite kobe's best efforts and kobe would put in that effort 2013 was one of the most underrated and best seasons of kobe's career he pulled off an incredible carry job this was the third most efficient offensively kobe had ever been he had some of his biggest carry games ever including a 42 7 and 12 game where he shot 62 from the field and led the team to a comeback versus the new orleans hornets and a game versus the portland trailblazers where he had 47 points eight rebounds five assists four blocks and three steals on good efficiency where he played quite literally every second of this game 48 minutes of regulation 48 minutes played did not sit the entire game and kobe was doing all of this at the age of 34. he damn near single-handedly got this team into the playoffs but unfortunately he had to give everything to get there from their reserves ryan again going to work falls down again he's struggling and he's going to stay down there for a bit it's hurting but the lakers down by two and they want him and need him at the free throw line got it yeah not backpedaling or whatever he has to do to get to the other end if in fact he gets to the other end before a foul maybe you've had a pretty unbelievable career is this the biggest disappointment of it considering everything that was involved yeah by far he worked so hard you know to put ourselves in a position where you know we control our own faith and yeah i certainly have done a lot of work um being able to prepare myself it's just uh it's just [ __ ] luck unfortunately tearing your achilles is pretty much guaranteed to drastically affect your career and that was the case for kobe he'd miss all but 41 games of the next two seasons where the lakers would go into a rebuild he was able to get a farewell tour in his final year where he statistically was not good at all because he just simply was not very good anymore because of the injuries but he sure as hell did give us a few good memories to end on after this game coach pop the chiefs of winners kobe he has to be dramatic with everything he gives us his show and has his cheering before his first bucket goes in behind myers leonard 65 for portland there's kobe bryant back on the floor and once again gets the favorable [Applause] and team usa slapping the floor here against the mamba will break will chamberlain's record and now the ovation for kobe bryant who is being substituted for and is being hugged all around by both teams as this season came to a close it really personally started to hit me like [ __ ] it's actually over and that was not a good feeling but kobe made sure to give us a show on his way out even though kobe by this point had long lost his nickname showboat he was still always happy to give people that show and his last nba game would be no different everyone going into this finals game was definitely expecting something for sure shaq even challenged kobe to drop 50 and a show was expected we all knew kobe was going to go out in a spectacular fashion that's just who he was we had come to expect that from his legend but i don't know how many people could have really expected what kobe gave us [Music] [Applause] he's got the lakers last check bryant for three one last gamer brian on the move with the jumper [Music] 58 points [Music] 60 goddamn points fun fact due to his injuries aging and earlier on a more passive role due to more help around him kobe had not dropped 60 points since february 2nd 2009 it had been seven goddamn years and on top of that he hadn't even scored 50 for longer than that kobe when he announced his retirement said that his body did not have much left to give he had put everything he had into the game but his body knew it was time to say goodbye but in kobe's last game the last time he would play on an nba court after two decades of pouring all of his life into it he reached for whatever his body had left to give he found everything he had left and laid it all on the line on his way to an electrifying and incredibly memorable 60-point game and that wraps up the story of kobe the basketball player but now we have to talk about kobe the man post-retirement kobe finally got a chance to relax spend time with his family as well as contribute to the game however he could from the sidelines coaching his daughter gianna's basketball team training with and giving advice to current players trying to pass on the lessons he could to the next generation his ventures as a businessman expanded he made an investment in an energy drink that added 200 million to his net worth and most importantly to most was his ventures into being an artist in both writing as well as a short film that he released that summarized his career and who he was in a way that personally makes me cry almost every time i watch it kobe won an oscar for this amazing piece of art and it was clear that his potential in this new path in life was pretty damn high because even if his natural talent wasn't outstanding we all knew that if he put in the work kobe could be great at literally anything and it was that potential on top of him starting to get his life outside of basketball as a family man together and sorted and finally being able to put the time into that that he couldn't when he was doing his nba stuff that only added more tragedy to his death the title of this video slash documentary whatever the hell this thing ended up being is the day that the nba stood still and that's because that genuinely is what seemed to happen like seeing the news on twitter followed by the collective grieving on a mass scale all of the anecdotes from players former and current the clips of nba players reacting to the news all of this [ __ ] was so [ __ ] shocking it hit the nba world like a ton of bricks the biggest reason outside of his death just coming in a generally shocking fashion is that kobe was genuinely like a god figure to people silly or not the guy seemed larger than life of course everyone dies but i mean kobe wasn't everyone kobe was kobe the pit in my stomach that day was insane hell i feel that pit from time to time when i think about it to this day i have moments where i'm just sitting there and i have no real thoughts and suddenly my brain goes bam kobe's dead and i just sink into that pit and as i said in my 2020 season mini dock where i briefly talked about kobe's death i felt joy simultaneously through the grief that day as i saw everyone talking about what kobe meant to them to the point where this tragic death quickly became a celebration of his life don't be sad because it's over be happy that it happened expressing that appreciation for kobe is the whole damn point of this video after his death there was a lot of discussion around kobe's legacy what he meant for basketball and for the world and honestly even though i spent a long ass time going over kobe's career his incredible moments many achievements and records that's not kobe's legacy that's just the window dressing on top of what his real legacy is and that legacy is hard work and perseverance everything kobe did in his career was just evidence of what really mattered which is who he was kobe bryant to me is the clearest example of hard work beating talent in nba history maybe just in life in general kobe from the very beginning had the mentality required to be great sure being six six and pretty athletic helps but really the average nba player is quite literally six six to six seven and pretty athletic and most nba players are not kobe to put it mildly everything from kobe from his play style to his mentality the way he talked to his teammates screamed laying it all on the line at every moment kobe was going to give everything he had and then he was going to find some more because [ __ ] there's probably something more to give in there somewhere and that's why so many people grew attached to kobe they saw a man they knew was determined to be great and they watched him be great you could talk about who the greatest player of all time is all you want and for the record i do not believe kobe is the greatest of all time but the title of the hardest working player of all time is pretty damn clear to me when players had to match up with kobe there were ways they could beat him they could out physical him hell you could probably even outsmart him from time to time but no one and i mean no one was going to outwork and out effort kobe there's not a moment that you can watch in kobe's career where you can think anything other than god damn does that guy want it kobe wanted to succeed as a basketball player more than anything and it was that determination that makes him so beloved and appreciated that mentality that defines kobe bryant's legacy i decided on the structure that i wanted for this video about two weeks ago and at the end of that structure is what you are watching right now the part where i talk about what kobe meant to me i decided to put this last because one most people who watch this video are rightfully not going to really care about me and i completely understand that and two trying to find the words to describe what kobe bryant meant to me has been difficult for over a year now conveying what my childhood hero meant to me has been a rather daunting task but i think looking at it now i did a pretty good job so here it goes my journey as an nba fan and a basketball fan was rather odd because i didn't watch the nba until i was about 12 but i was a kobe fan ever since i was around eight or nine because at that age while i was not watching it at the professional level i very much enjoyed playing it and dreamed to one day play at that professional level so as any nine year old in 2009 who wanted to get better at basketball would do i went straight to youtube where i would discover multiple mixes of kobe bryant footage of him both just being an awesome player as well as some motivational talks some lessons at basketball and this really just brought me down a rabbit hole of wow this guy is really cool and as a result of that kobe quickly became the guy for me trying to become a better basketball player but while i had not realized that yet subconsciously he'd also become the guy for me trying to better myself as a person in general when i was in middle school it was my dream to be an nba player i just had two problems one i do not have an ounce and i mean even a drop of athleticism in my blood but two i've always naturally been kind of lazy even things that i would enjoy doing i would procrastinate just because my natural instinct was to do nothing over even doing something i enjoyed just being kind of naturally lazy is something that i've always dealt with and still do to this day and i don't know if there's some underlying mental thing there there probably is feel free to diagnose me in the comment section i just think this is kind of who i am motivation is something that is not easy for me to acquire and just kind of sitting around and doing nothing is something that i very much enjoy and that mindset and way of being was obviously quite contradictory to being an nba player so my goals and kind of who i was were in conflict so that's something that i have struggled to conquer and back then when i was trying to conquer that i decided that the best way to do that would be by watching motivational videos from kobe bryant i would go on youtube look up kobe inspiration mix and it would be just a compilation of his highlights maybe him working out uh just some quotes that he had said and then whatever rap song or pop song was popular in 2012. i used kobe and his mentality as a counter to my natural way of being when i couldn't motivate myself i had kobe bryant to motivate me but well what is that story actually worth because clearly i am not an nba player right now hell i'm not even in good shape for an average person and i wouldn't even say that my basketball skill is more than probably around average for somebody who plays as much as i do but the thing about that is you do not need to be a basketball player for kobe and his lessons and his mentality to have impacted you in middle school i was probably taking something like 300 shots per day as a result of kobe just trying to get my game to the highest level that i could taking a bunch of fade aways in my driveway as i'm sure many of y'all did if you're watching this video and i mean that fade away tendency has stuck around if you watched my 100k special that's kind of my go-to even though those 300 shots per day that i was taking didn't amount to anything in terms of my nba career the fact that i as the person that i was at the time was going out there and putting in that work despite that being what i was telling myself i didn't want to do even though i also didn't was a testament to what kobe's impact was on me and to this day even though again not an nba player i still have that tendency and that natural inkling in the back of my head that says hey let's just not do anything today and even though i still have bad days and there are days where i fail to conquer that for the most part i would say i am drastically better at pushing through and being very efficient and working hard when i need to i cranked out this documentary edit job after staying up for about 30 hours uh so mama mentality [ __ ] see kobe has this specific quote that i put at the start of this video that i decided that i was going to live by a while ago when you make a choice and you say come hell or high water i am going to be this do not be surprised when you are that in my case it's obviously not basketball but for me at a certain point in my life i decided that what i am doing right now is what i wanted to do for a living and one day i decided come hell or high water i don't know what that actually means but kobe said it so i'm taking it uh come hell or high water i am going to be a youtuber i am going to be an nba youtuber i am going to find success at this and even when i had a hundred subs i was treating this [ __ ] like a job because that's what i wanted so badly and now that i am sitting at now 130k by the time this video is coming out i am not surprised that i am here i am grateful and i acknowledge the luck that i have but i know that i put in that work to get here i sure as [ __ ] am not the crowning example of someone who took kobe's mentality and turned it into something for themselves i don't live up to kobe standards nor do 95 percent of people in the world but i can say because of kobe bryant at the end of each day i think about how i can make the next day better i think about how i can make the next year better i think about how i can make the next video better all of that stuff i'm constantly thinking of how to be better and that's thanks to kobe bryant i still do not accomplish that every day i can i cannot say that every day of my life gets progressively better but i will say that kobe instilled that mentality and that work ethic in me and i'm very grateful for that when i was younger i really did not have a direction and thanks to kobe bryant i now have one i will never properly fully put into words what kobe meant to me but i think i did about as good of a job as i can right there and once this video is up in a couple of days i'm probably gonna be thinking about how i could have made this summary and this video better and that is because of kobe so i'm just gonna end this video saying something that i wish i could have said to him in person at some point but tragically never will thank you kobe bryant have a good time enjoy life it's uh life is too short to to get bogged down to be discouraged or you have to keep moving you have to keep going put one foot in front of the other smile and just keep on rolling

Channel: Rusty Buckets

Views: 379,409

Rating: 4.9509087 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 16aCKdJq5os

Length: 56min 3sec (3363 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FaptainSparrow]

Tf is this time stamped at the worst moment