If you don’t understand why Kobe Bryant will go out like this, defiant to the end, airballing shot number 20 Sunday night, having missed 15 of the previous 19 shots, with a chance for his Los Angeles Lakers to tie the Indiana Pacers at the end of regulation — as if he would be a decoy for Jordan Clarkson — then you didn’t see Mike Tyson with the baby.
This was late in the night of June 8, 2002. Less than an hour earlier, Tyson, as he would put it, had his nose bone smashed into his brainpan by Lennox Lewis, an erudite Brit who happened to be 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds when he was the heavyweight champion of the world, and the possessor of a murderous right hand.
That night, Lewis’ right did its ominous work. It connected with Tyson’s nose bone, which went into his brainpan, which caused him that temporary short circuit between the brain and the body that culminates in a boxer being knocked out. That it was Tyson being knocked down — knocked out — did not matter to Lewis’ right hand, nor did it give that hand any pause.
A decade earlier, Tyson had been the baddest man on the planet, the undisputed and most feared heavyweight champion since Sonny Liston. I don’t mean feared the way a lot of people feared Muhammad Ali when he first announced he was a “Black Muslim” following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. I mean physical fear of a human being and what he could do to you.
People — boxers, professional boxers — were scared that Tyson would hurt them. Really hurt them. And, with good reason: most of his fights didn’t last more than a round or two. (Exhibit A: one Michael Spinks, pre-Tyson fight.) And for five years, Tyson was invincible, impregnable.
“These fellas,” Tyson said after dispatching another hapless heavyweight, circa 1987 or so. “How dare they challenge me with their somewhat primitive skills? They’re just as good as dead.”
Anyway, this went on and on, until Tyson, like Alexander, had no more worlds left to conquer — at least not in the States. So, he went to Japan for a quick fight and a quick payday.
Which is where Buster Douglas cleaned his clock.
And from that moment on, Tyson wasn’t the baddest man on the planet any more.
He won fights, but he lost some, too. The cloak of invincibility was gone. And by 2002, he was done — barely a contender, much less a champion. But he kept fighting, mainly because he owed people money, to be sure. But also because it’s what he did for a living.
But after Lewis’ right knocked him out, Tyson granted an postfight interview in his dressing room. He had his baby daughter in his arms. He was as content as could be. He was gracious and smiled and apologized to Lewis for saying before the fight that he wanted to eat his children. There was no shame or embarrassment in having his nose bone smashed into his brainpan, and getting knocked out.
They die in public, the great ones, for that is how they lived. There is no hiding, no shirking from what must happen. They must be vanquished, totally, for their success and dominance to have any meaning. No one can understand what it is to truly be humbled — humiliated — than the one who lorded over others so completely.
And that’s why there is no shame that Kobe Bryant, at 37, in what he officially announced via The Players Tribune on Sunday will be his last NBA season, is going out like this. It is neither an embarrassment to him nor a tarnishing of his athletic legacy that he’s shooting 30.5 percent (67 of 220) from the floor.
It is a tribute to his abilities and mental toughness that he continues. He knows better than any of those who mock him daily on Twitter how much he’s lost the last couple of years to injuries, and age. He doesn’t need (in)validation from the masses. He knew how much he’d lost physically five years ago, before you knew it, when he could still camouflage it.
“There’s so much beauty in the pain of this thing,” Bryant said Sunday night, after the Pacers game. “It sounds really weird to say that. But I appreciate the really, really tough times as much as much as I appreciate the great times. It’s important to go through that progression. Because that’s when you really learn about yourself.”
There are no shortcuts to being great, truly great, and that means not taking them when you are no longer great as well. So Bryant planned to lift Monday morning, and get in the first of his three stretches on the day, and then practice, and do it again the next day.
“I’ve worked so hard,” he said, “and continue to work really, really hard, even though I’ve played like (expletive). I’ve worked really, really hard to try not to play like crap. I just do everything that I possibly can. And I feel good about that.”
It is impossible not to write about Bryant without writing about Michael Jordan, whom he idolized growing up, to the point where many thought he was mimicking Jordan’s speech patterns, as well as his jumper. For Jordan was also ridiculed — though in a slightly quieter, pre-Twitter era — when he came out of retirement to play for the Wizards in 2001. Why do this, columnists shrieked. You’ll ruin your legacy.
Which was the problem.
It’s his legacy, not yours.
As with Jordan (who didn’t play all that bad in two seasons in a Washington Wizards uniform, except he was no longer Michael Jordan), Bryant has earned the right to end his career any damn way he wants to. If he wants to chuck 25 shots a night and make five, and the Lakers don’t care, so be it. It’s their team, and it’s his body. He doesn’t “owe” you anything, other than his best effort, which no one can say he’s not giving.
What was most telling, to me, about Jordan’s comeback was the knowledge that he had before he began it — he had no way of winning a championship with the Wizards, and winning championships was the whole reason for his being as a basketball player. It’s what he spent seven years trying to achieve in Chicago, and then six years trying to defend, sandwiched around his baseball hiatus. And yet, he came back and played, anyway.
If Jeannie Buss or Jim Buss think Bryant was embarrassing or hurting the Lakers brand in any way by stumbling to the finish line, they would have let coach Byron Scott know by now. (For that matter, Scott would have let Bryant know.) They know that Bryant’s presence has enriched (literally) their lives a hundred fold, that he’s brought all of them so many positives that the negative of the end of his career pales in comparison.
It is why they gave him the $48 million deal two years ago. He’d earned it.
It will not damage the development of DeAngelo Russell or Jordan Clarkson or Julius Randle to play with Bryant for a year. It will help them, immensely. (As for the losing, you realize it’s in the Lakers’ self-interest to lose a lot this year, right?)
As for Bryant … some of y’all have the memory of peat moss.
Bryant was the baddest man walking in the NBA for years and years, the driving force behind the Lakers’ resurgence, who teamed with Shaquille O’Neal for three straight championships, then with Pau Gasol for a couple more. (There was, of course, coach Phil Jackson to make it all work on both occasions, along with several outstanding teammates.) Five rings gives you immunity from anyone else’s brilliant ideas about how you should finish what they could never dream of achieving.
“Kobe was my Jordan, watching him win championships,” Indiana’s Paul George told reporters in L.A. Sunday. “When I was growing up, that’s who I idolized.”
George was polite enough not to point out that, less than an hour earlier, he’d cleaned Bryant’s clock, with 39 points.
No one gives a damn that Willie Mays, for example, hit .211 in his final season as a major league player with the New York Mets in 1973, when he was 42. Nobody cares about that. They remember Mays catching Vic Wertz’s line drive to center in the 1954 World Series. They remember the 11 Gold Gloves and 2 league MVP awards. They remember the “Say Hey Kid”, not the washed up old man.
No one remembers Johnny Unitas, at 38, in a San Diego Chargers uniform. They remember him leading the Baltimore Colts to the 1958 NFL Championship.
No one remembers Bobby Orr ending his career with the Chicago Blackhawks. They remember him flying through the air for the Boston Bruins to win the 1970 Stanley Cup. Nobody remembers Ali’s last fight, against Trevor Berbick, in 1981. (Actually, Rick Fox does; his dad took him to the fight when he was a kid.)
And even if you do, so what?
Bryant came into the league shooting airballs; he’ll leave shooting them. That’s the athlete’s life — green going in, gray going out. The greatest ones, the ones who have succeeded the most, achieved so much with their will, are the ones who will always, always believe there is a way out, a way to beat Father Time.
“I continue to push,” Bryant said. “I continue to try. That never stops … I don’t quit. I keep pushing and pushing and pushing and see if I can figure this damned thing out, you know what I mean? And that’s just, that’s who I am. I would never just capitulate to it. I accept it, I understand it, and now I’m trying to figure out how to get around it. And I’ll try my best, and I’ll keep on, keep on going.”
He will start the farewell tour on Tuesday in Philadelphia, where he played at nearby Lower Merion High School, and the tributes will continue all week, all season, in arena after arena, where fans won’t care if they see Kobe Bryant go 4-for-20, as long as they get to see him.
They closed their eyes when Elvis was in his 40s, badly overweight but still wearing those ridiculous jumpsuits, because it wasn’t about whether Elvis could still sing by then, it’s what he did all those nights they weren’t there, and could only listen to his records, or watch him on TV, and imagine what it was like.
Bryant will play 66 more games, and go on to be wildly successful doing whatever he decides to do next, and in time, no one will remember the last years of his playing career, when he was old and couldn’t play anymore. They’ll remember him when he scored 81 against the Toronto Raptors, or dominated the San Antonio Spurs, or went off against the Indiana Pacers in The Finals, and they’ll celebrate his athletic life, not its death.
