I was too young to really enjoy Magic Johnson and Showtime. When Magic won his last title in 1988, I was only 10. I remember watching the games, but for some reason, I remember 1989, when the Lakers lost to the Pistons and then 1991, when the Lakers lost to the Bulls, much better than any of the earlier NBA Finals. In fact, the first Lakers teams I can say are mine are the 1993–1995 Lake Show Lakers.
Look at the highlights below. This team was awesome. Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones, Cedric Ceballos, Elden Campbell, Vlade Divac. They were young, fun, but just average. But for me, these were my formative years of basketball fandom. While I learned to love basketball because of Showtime, I learned basketball because of the Lake Show.
In 1996, I graduated high school. That same year, the Lakers signed Shaquille O’Neal and drafted my age-peer Kobe Bryant.
I said goodbye to the Lake Show and hello to the two-headed Kobe-Shaq dragon.
I fell in love with Kobe immediately. He was my Michael Jordan. I knew that he’d become Michael. He talked like Michael. He played like Michael. Hell, in his rookie season, Kobe guarded MJ and blocked Michael’s shot!
Everything I read about Kobe suggested greatness. The late great Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray compared Kobe to baby Jesus. Even the Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith blasphemously called Kobe “the air apparent.”
By the time Kobe and I were 20, he was the best shooting guard in basketball. By the time he was 21, he had his first title. I reveled in the championship. It was the first of my adulthood in any sport (Lakers, Dodgers, Trojans, Kings). In winning this title, Kobe provided me two of the most seminal moments of my sporting life.
There are moments in every sporting fan’s life that he or she fondly remembers forever. Michael Jordan’s “The Shot,” Kirk Gibson’s home run, Landon Donovan’s goal versus Algeria.
For me, it was Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals and the Lakers trailed by 13 heading into the fourth quarter. I remember sitting on one of those low-to-the-ground beach chairs in my bedroom at my mom’s house. If the Lakers lost, it’d be one of the most disappointing playoff defeats in team history. It’d be Shaq’s third year on the team with no rings and Kobe just might not be the next Michael Jordan. But then came the torrid fourth quarter.
When Kobe took the ball to the free throw line with the Lakers up four and one basket away from putting the game in the refrigerator, I knew, you knew, everyone knew that Kobe wanted to shoot the shot. He’d make it and it’d be considered one of the biggest shots in Lakers’ history. But NO! Kobe rose up and found Shaq who slammed it home! I don’t remember Shaq running like a fool and flying into the Lakers’ bench because I was flying like a fool around my house screaming like a mad man.
In my years watching sports, no one has made me jump out of my seat more than Kobe Bryant. There are other great Lakers’ moments—Horry’s three-pointer against Sacramento, Derek Fisher’s .4—but Kobe has so many of these moments it’s impossible to name them all.
Just a few weeks after wowing the world with his alley-oop pass to Shaq (and being the best player for the Lakers that day), Kobe saved the Lakers in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. Shaq fouled out and the game headed into overtime. While Game 7 against Portland proved Kobe was the wunderkind everyone predicted, Game 4 against Indiana proved Kobe to be the “air apparent.”
In this game, Kobe took over and told us all to calm down, trust him, he’ll handle everything.
And for the next 16 years, I’ve stood behind him saying, “In Kobe I trust.”
There is so much I can write about Kobe. In the past I’ve written that Kobe is truly a Homeric hero. His two perfect free throws with a torn Achilles is one of the most heroic and heartbreaking moments of my sporting life.
In fact, that year I had turned 35 and Kobe was 34, but I could feel my body growing old. I couldn’t shave off the weight like I used to. A slight jog around the neighborhood left me sore for days. Weightlifting became burdensome, not fun. And Kobe was playing against 20-somethings who could play 48 minutes in back-to-back games without a problem. That season might be Kobe’s greatest year ever. He was supposed to have help — Dwight Howard and Steve Nash — but neither did much. The coach didn’t really have a gameplan either other than give Kobe the ball and have other players spot up for three. That year, Kobe literally broke himself willing the team into the playoffs.
Those free throws define everything I love about Kobe. He needed to make the free throws. The team needed those free throws. While 99.9 percent of athletes would be wheelchaired to the locker room (hello, Paul Pierce) with lesser injuries, Kobe stepped up and hit two free throws with a major tendon hanging from his leg. (God, there’s so much symbolism in this moment!)
Some people argue that Lebron James in his prime was better than Kobe. I might agree if it weren’t for how Kobe made me feel when watching him. Every time he steps on the court (even this year with Kobe playing D-league level basketball) I feel like something special might happen. Just the other day, with Kobe making only three of 18 shots to this point, he hit a three-pointer to bring the Lakers close and I screamed like it was game 7 of the NBA Finals. Lebron has never made me feel this way. (Other NBA players have made me feel this way: Steph Curry and Michael Jordan are two.)
My seminal years of sports watching revolve around Kobe Bryant. We aged together, made mistakes together, celebrated together. I know it’s time for Kobe to retire, but it’s still sad and scary. For more than a decade and a half, he’s been the beacon that Laker fans have gravitated to. The current squad gives me hope that success for the Lakers is just on the horizon, but the seas are really rough. Even now, with Kobe’s bad knees, bad fingers, bad shoulder, repaired Achilles and old bones, there is no one I trust more to captain the team out of these dangerous waters.
I will miss you, Kobe Bryant.
