Kobe Bryant says farewell after 20 years with the LA Lakers

The Lakers shot just 28 percent as a team, and a 13-point third quarter all but doomed them in Game 81 of their season.

As Bryant walked toward the bus, which was scheduled to take the team to the airport for the final charter flight of his career, Bryant was asked what he will miss about the road.

“I couldn’t do it”, Bryant said. “A lot of faces that I saw in the crowd in my very first game are still here”. It hasn’t really hit me yet. There wasn’t nothing that we were going to do defensively with adjustments that he hadn’t seen.

“The things that’s he’s accomplished, the way he revolutionised the game, the way he approached the game, he attitudes towards getting better and working hard; it’s incredible”. Adrenaline or not, whether his body cooperates is not a given. “He’ll play more in that game than he has in any all season”, Scott said….

Yet, Scott said he maintained optimism Bryant could play through his final National Basketball Association season without suffering a major ailment.

It’s not always easy to say goodbye, but after 20 years in purple and gold, Kobe Bryant is close to ending one chapter of his career. Then there’s soccer. The sport Bryant learned to love in Italy features many games broadcast in Spanish and interviews with great players, like Lionel Messi, who feel comfortable speaking in only Spanish. Kevin Durant also had a super efficient 34 points in 27 minutes on 11-of-18 shooting, including six of 11 from downtown. “We got a chance to celebrate one of the greatest to ever play the game this season, and I think we did it the right way”. “It was on another level”. Scott has joked that he might let Bryant play all 48 minutes Wednesday, but both have conceded that Bryant isn’t physically able to do so.

From his iconic game-winners against the Trailblazers and Suns, to his posterizing of players like Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, Cornrow Kenny sums up the greatness that was 8 & 24’s career in a seamless nutshell. That is the one part of Bryant’s farewell that sticks with New Orleans Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry.

When you are as transcendent a figure as Kobe Bryant, you are a magnet for admiration. “It’s just how you doing?”

The Lakers star is now willing to conduct extended interviews in the language, relating stories like the one that had him putting together a Barbie Dream House for his daughter on Christmas Eve with a game looming the next day. It would be great if he could do it like Peyton Manning, because he’s deserving of something like that. I watch writers come and go or evolve and change, watching them go through that.