There was a time at the start of the night when it looked like Kobe Bryant might be able to play another 20 years.
He ran and moved smoothly, he elevated with confidence and he buried his first five shots of the game ? including a pair of 3-pointers ? and hardly looked like man who’d missed the last two starts while nursing a bad back.
“He’s Kobe Bryant,” said Lakers coach Byron Scott. “The first five or six minutes I was sitting there like, ‘I can’t believe this guy was sick the other day and his back was hurting a couple days ago.’ To have four or five days off and to come out and play the way he played, I’m not surprised.”
If this was the last time he played in American Airlines Center, Bryant gave Dallas fans just what they wanted with a vintage glimpse of his old self, but not enough to spoil a 90-82 win by their Mavericks over the Lakers.
Bryant’s 7-for-15 shooting performance was his best of the season and he finished with 19 points, five rebounds, three assists and six turnovers in 32 minutes. However, the Lakers still lost for the fourth time on their five-game road trip and fell to 1-8 on the season.
“I felt OK,” he said. “I was able to do some things to strengthen my back and do some things for my legs…My back felt pretty good. It was still a little tight, but it wasn’t painful.”
For the first time this season, Bryant wore a matching long-sleeved shirt under his purple Lakers jersey. “I gotta make sure this bad boy stays loose,” he said, pointing to his surgically-repaired right shoulder.
Actually, it was positively warm and fuzzy to see a couple of 37-year-old dinosaurs in Bryant and the Mavs’ Dirk Nowitzki share a basketball court again and occasionally square off against each other. The pair of games that they’ve played this season are the only two times in NBA history that a 20-year veteran who’s spent his entire career with one team has met an 18-year, one-team vet.
When Kobe found himself guarding Dirk during one possession in the second quarter, Nowitzki used a nifty move to get through for a layup and the two of them ran back down the floor laughing and talking.
“Just two old guys having fun,” Bryant said. “I haven’t been able to get to his fadeaway. So I was timing him up to try to catch him before he gets up high, because he’s too damn tall. Once he’s up there I can’t get it. I figured I would try to catch him. But he has great footwork and he was able to catch me and make the step all the way through.
“We were just kinda laughing about it. I just wished him luck and told him to stay healthy. He wished me the same thing.
“I love playing against Dirk. It’s great to see him. It’s rare to play against somebody that came up around the same era that I did. So it’s good to see him.”
In his role as mentor, Bryant hopes to see his many young teammates make progress as what might be his farewell season continues.
“There’s a lot of great things that they did,” Bryant said. “I told them, ‘You guys played a lot better. You moved yourself a lot better.’ You just gotta stay with the process.
“It’s not so much what I learn from them. It’s what they learn about themselves and how I can help them learn about themselves through this process.”
Through the growing pains and the nightly battles, the notoriously fierce competitor is noticing a change in the way opponents treat him. There are verbal exchanges, he said, but no trash talking.
“They don’t give me grief,” Bryant said. “I don’t get grief honestly anymore from opposing teams. We just chit-chat…We just converse. It’s like ‘Good to see you.’ ”
And though he has not definitively said this is his final NBA season, he is taking the time to soak in all of the experiences as he travels around the league. He’s listening to the calls from visiting crowds of “Kobe! Kobe!” He’s noticing the signs in the stands that pay homage.
“Absolutely,” Bryant said. “This could be my last time here. It’s funny, because there’s a lot of Mavs fans that normally heckle the (bleep) out of me. They let me have it. Tonight they didn’t. It was just kinda like high-fives and best-of-luck sort of thing.
“It has been the case. During the game you get right back to it. But at the start of the game and the end of the game, there’s a lot of thank yous.
“It is strange. But honestly, if I had to pick, I’d have it that way. Start of the game it’s thank yous from the fans and then during the game ‘We hate you! Boo!’ Then at the end of the game it’s a thank you.”
Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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