BOSTON – Throughout his 20-year career, Kobe Bryant has experienced both triumphant and difficult times on the Los Angeles side of the Celtics/Lakers rivalry. He was born a Laker fan and was raised to loath the Celtics, but when it’s all said and done, the city of Boston – and TD Garden in particular – will always hold a special place in his heart.
Bryant will play his 23rd and final game at TD Garden Wednesday night, and prior to the game he took a trip down memory lane with members of the media. One thing was clear through the entire 15-minute interview: He holds utmost respect for the Celtics organization and his career would not be the same without this rivalry.
“I grew up a really big historian of the game, understanding Boston’s history, the players, the lineage of the players, the championships won,” said Bryant. “So this place was always special to me.”
It’s interesting to note that the Garden nearly became his home. The Celtics worked out a 17-year-old Bryant ahead of the 1996 Draft and expressed attraction toward him. The young guard was apprehensive at first at the idea of working out for the team he grew up hating, but he was soon fully on board.
“I respected the franchise and the history so much that I worked as hard as I could during the workout,” recalled Bryant. “I really wanted to impress them because of the legacy. If they decided to draft me I was going to carry this franchise the way they deserved to be.”
He did impress the Celtics that day with his knowledge of the game and his potential, but it was just never meant to be. The Celtics used the sixth overall pick to draft Antoine Walker. Bryant fell to the Hornets with the 13th pick, before being dealt to his beloved Lakers.
From there, it took awhile for Bryant to understand the heat of the Celtics/Lakers rivalry from a player’s standpoint. He played 12 seasons and won three titles before he finally met the C’s in the Finals for the first time in 2008.
His Lakers were defeated in that series in six games, but Bryant says that championship loss turned out to be the pivotal moment of the second half of his career.
It angered him and further fed his desire to win.
Bryant and the Lakers went on to win the next two NBA Championships, including a 2010 rematch against the C’s. It was during that series that Bryant had his fondest TD Garden memory, interestingly, after going down 3-2 in this building.
Bryant came back to the visitor’s locker room following the Game 5 loss and he and his teammates sat and pondered.
“We were all kind of like ‘what the hell just happened … this can’t be happening again,’ said Bryant. “And then I found the humor in it and I just started laughing.”
Laughing.
When he was one loss away from losing a second title to Boston. His teammates were understandably confused, but then he explained the reasoning behind the laughter and turned it into a powerful message.
Bryant told them, “‘Guys, listen man, first of all they kicked our butt, and that’s pretty funny. And secondly, if we started the season and they told us that all we had to do was go home and win two games to be NBA champions, would you take that deal?”
They took the deal and won the final two games for Bryant’s fifth and most cherished championship ring.
That Game 5 was the last pivotal game of the storied Celtics/Lakers rivalry at TD Garden.
The question is, when will this rivalry rekindle to that degree again?
“One thing that we can all trust as sports fans is you can trust the sports gods to line these teams up,” said Bryant. “It’s going to happen. You go back to Russell and West, Magic and Bird, myself and KG… it’s going to happen. That’s just how sports are. Whether it’s 20 years from now, whether it’s 30 years from now, you know that it’s going to happen and when it does we’ll all sit back and enjoy it.”
As for tonight, this will be the last chance to sit back and enjoy one last Kobe Bryant show at TD Garden. The legend himself will certainly be enjoying it as well.
“I’ll gaze up, I’ll look at the banners a lot,” Bryant said. “I’ll scan the crowd a lot and try to soak it all in as much as possible. Its always cool when I come here, I always look up into the rafters and scan the crowd and always appreciate the sea of green.”
It’s an appreciation that’s mutual, as Bryant has played a major role in retaining this rivalry.
Now it’s time to send him out with some respectful cheers, some thunderous boos, and, of course, one final loss at TD Garden.
– Taylor C. Snow
