We've all seen his private camera crews following him and TWSN doing the same with the personal story behind his final games in the NBA.
Prior to the game about 4PM I had a thought and was going to throw it out here but didn't because the likelihood of anything even 1/2 as momentous as what happened in Kobe's last game seemed the most unlikely of outcomes ..... pure pipe.
But I thought about what a huge monetary potential from various opportunities if Kobe were to have some kind of great performance in his final game. Against all odds. And then he freaking pulls out of his magic repertoire the single most amazing individual performance for someone his age in their final game ...... probably in sports history. I'm just guessing here. But even if anything else is remotely in the same conversation it certainly was not covered with the high end audio and camera gear that was there last night. And Kobe freaking NAILED it.
When Kobe was drafted in June of 1996 Bill Clinton was President, the first season of The Daily Show started, the first Mission Impossible was finishing up its box office run, and D'Angelo Russell was 4 months and 3 days old.
Now something you'll hear a lot and have been hearing a lot is how Kobe has been the heart and soul of this team for 20 years, well that's not exactly true. When Kobe was drafted we also signed a guy named Shaquille O'Neal that bridged the gap between Magic Johnson and a skinny kid coming out of high school. It's hard to really piece it together, but Magic played his final game on May 2nd, exactly 55 days before we traded for Kobe's draft rights. At just 17 years old Kobe wasn't ready to lead us anywhere and certainly wasn't our heart and soul, but he was still Kobe even back then. Even at the draft, just watching this young man he exuded what everyone would come to realize was uniquely him, uniquely Kobe: he was interesting.
