Late Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant was known for many things, and among them was his maniacal mindset toward basketball. While other players see basketball as either a game or their career, Bryant saw it as life or death. He didn’t want to win — he needed to win.
It was that mindset and attitude that drove him to win five NBA championships and be considered by many as the best all-around player or non-big man for a span of up to 10 years. Although his game slipped a bit as he approached his mid-30s, it looked like he was going to age like fine wine until he tore his Achilles in April 2013.
He returned the following fall, only to promptly sustain a lateral tibial plateau fracture in his left knee. By the 2014-15 season, he had become, by NBA standards, an awful player, and early the following season, he announced that he would call it quits at the end of the campaign.
Lou Williams, a guard on the Lakers that season, said on the “Gil’s Arena” podcast that early on, Bryant lost the “Mamba mentality” he had become renowned for (h/t Lakers Daily).
“First, I wanna say this,” Williams began. “Two-four started that season as Kobe Bryant. Training camp, he was pushing everybody. He was getting his body ready. He was getting his mind ready. He was making sure we all was on the same page.
“And then as I remember it, I feel like nine, 10 games in, his body started breaking down, and he came to the realization that this was the end, and his mentality shifted. He became a lot lighthearted. He became more easygoing.
“And I knew at that point he had kinda took his foot off the gas, like he knew his body wasn’t gonna hold up to the standard that he had set for himself.”
Bryant would end up averaging just 17.6 points and 2.8 assists in 28.2 minutes a game that season, and he made only 35.8% of his field-goal attempts. It was a sad sight for Lakers fans who were used to seeing him find ways to excel in almost any situation, and his body had finally completely betrayed him.
But he did leave behind one big gift and an indelible memory. In his final NBA game, which took place against the Utah Jazz, he scored 60 points and led Los Angeles to victory after it trailed by 10 with just over three minutes left. He took a whopping 50 shots in that game, but he was fairly efficient, and the world got one more dose of his iron-clad will to win and clutch heroics.