As I walked into the Staples Center on Sunday evening, I really
didn’t have any idea as to what I should expect.
I hadn’t really been following the NBA the same way as I
normally do, but I definitely knew that the Toronto Raptors, which
have been my favorite team since they joined the league,
hadn’t been playing very well and that Kobe Bryant was in the
middle of arguably the best season of his nine-year career.
And trust me, after the game had ended, all my notions were
reaffirmed quite convincingly with evidence from the game I had
just seen.
The Raptors had blown a 19-point lead and Kobe Bryant had sort
of helped his team accomplish what they were looking for ““
another win.
Oh, and by “sort of,” I mean single-handedly.
After all, he scored 81 points, the second most in NBA history
behind Wilt Chamberlain who dropped 100 way back when.
I went to this particular game to watch my favorite team go up
against my sister’s favorite team, and have been doing so for
the last six years.
There has always been a rivalry between the two of us, but I
think I just gave her the victory last night, at least for the time
being, thanks to Mr. Bryant.
I can’t quite recall how many times I claimed that
Kobe’s performance was “amazing” or
“unbelievable” last night, and to be honest, I
can’t quite recall how and when he scored all of his
points.
But my attitude towards him was not the same throughout the
night. Sitting just three rows behind the Lakers bench, I began to
notice in the first quarter that Kobe wasn’t engaging in any
conversations with his teammates on the sidelines while Andrew
Bynum, Luke Walton, and Devean George were all joking with one
another.
Maybe he had something on his mind. Maybe he was devising a way
to help guide his team to victory. Or maybe he wanted the ball to
do the talking.
“He was ticked off,” teammate Lamar Odom said on
what led Bryant on such a tear.
Bryant’s coach, Phil Jackson, has coached some of the
greatest players in recent years including Michael Jordan, but he,
himself, said that this was something completely different.
“I’ve seen some remarkable games, but I’ve
never seen anything like that,” Jackson said.
But for most of the game, Jackson was busy worrying about coming
back to beat the Raptors, devising various schemes, and not
focusing at all on Bryant’s point total.
“I wasn’t keeping track of what he had and I turned
to one of my assistants and I said, “˜I think I better take
him out now,'” Jackson said. “He said “˜I
don’t think you can. He has 77 points.'”
Even Kobe wasn’t worrying about his point total and
continued to sink shot after shot and free-throw after
free-throw.
“Lamar whispered to me and said, “˜You can’t
get 60.’ That’s where it kind of set in a little
bit,” Bryant said after the game.
From the sound of it, perhaps the only people keeping track of
Kobe’s scoring more than the actual score of the game were
the fans I was among in an arena that has never witnessed something
of this magnitude.
And by the time the fourth quarter rolled around, I became one
of them.
I had accepted the fact that my beloved Raptors had no chance to
win.
I had accepted that my sister would rub this in my face until
next year rolled around.
But now the time had for me to stand up with the rest of the
crowd and join them in chants of “Kobe” and
“MVP,” hoping that he would create a historic
performance.
I watched as he side-stepped defenders, as his teammates fed him
the ball in hopes of him increasing his score count, as he drove
strong to the basket, and I watched the Lakers bench respond to the
breath-taking response.
Everyone in the vicinity was on their feet watching as they
prayed not to wake up just to realize that this was all just a
dream””mdash;one that Kobe himself had never had.
“Never. Not in my dreams. It’s something that just
happened. It just happened,” Bryant said after being asked if
he could ever score so many points in a game.
E-mail Behniwal at abehniwal@media.ucla.edu if you also feel
that Kobe’s performance cannot be justified simply by words,
especially the above words.