Vino came out of the bottle once again to deliver his team a game-winning bucket.
In his first game since adopting his “like fine wine” nickname, Kobe Bryant dropped 34 points and hit a go-ahead layup with 9.0 second left to push his team past Atlanta, 99-98.
Bryant scored 111 points in the fourth quarter, including all of Los Angeles’ last six. On the decisive hoop, he kissed it off the glass to turn a one-point deficit into victory.
Though Atlanta forced 21 L.A. turnovers and shot 50.0 percent behind 24 points from Al Horford, Bryant was too much to handle.
“There’s a reason why he’s the best player in the game,” Horford said. “He did what he usually does, and we didn’t do a good enough job on him.”
With Pau Gasol injured, Bryant received some help in the form of double-doubles from Steve Nash (15 points, 10 assists) and Dwight Howard (11 points, 13 rebounds).
Kobe performances on this day in history:
A video posted by Los Angeles Lakers (@lakers) on Mar 3, 2016 at 9:19am PST
A video posted by Los Angeles Lakers (@lakers) on Mar 3, 2016 at 9:19am PST
