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Kobe Bryant Destroys LeBron James & Dwyane Wade in NBA All Star Game!

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Dear Basketball: The Legend of Kobe Bryant (Retirement Tribute Mix)

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Thank you, Kobe. For all those nights where I sat in front of a flickering television, finding excitement and wonder from the craft you dedicated your life to. In your high flying highlights I found respite from a world that can be oh so cruel. Thank you, Kobe.

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Three Things to Know: Anthony Davis is playing like an MVP of late
Every day in the NBA there is a lot to unpack, so every weekday morning throughout the season we will give you the three things you need to know from the last 24 hours in the NBA.

1) Anthony Davis has historic night against Suns, Pelicans win sixth straight. Phoenix's Devin Booker would have been the star of the game most nights - 40 points on 18 shots, plus 10 rebounds.

Monday night it wasn't close to enough. Continuing a run of insane play, Anthony Davis went off for 53 points on 29 shots, grabs 18 rebounds, and had five blocked shots.

More importantly, Davis led the Pelicans to a 125-116 win that they needed (their sixth straight) in a tight playoff chase in the West. The Pelicans are up to the five seed as of Tuesday morning (just 1.5 games out of the three seed, but still just two games clear of the nine-seed Clippers and being out of the playoffs in the tight West).

Since Cousins went down Davis has been playing at an MVP level (and will get serious bottom half of the ballot consideration from voters). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Davis has 196 points and 72 rebounds total in the past five games (39.2/14.4 per game average). The last guy to put up those kinds of numbers in a five-game stretch? Shaquille O'Neal in March 2000.

This run of play by Davis is going to make the All-NBA ballot interesting:

The only real debate for Anthony Davis is if he is voted All-NBA first team as a C or PF. Would have a financial impact on the 76ers and Joel Embiid.

- Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) February 27, 2018

Not so fast with the forward thing, my friend. Davis has been brilliant both of late and all season, but is he having a better season than LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo? The All-NBA ballot is specific: Two guards, two forwards, one center. So far this season, Davis has played 60 percent of his minutes as a forward, 40 as a center, but the center numbers are climbing fast with Cousins out. If voters choose to classify Davis as a forward (and the NBA has some say in this, by whether he's made available as a center on the voting list), then one of LeBron/Antetokounmpo/Davis gets screwed and pushed back to the second team. If Davis is the first team center (as he was last season), the Joel Embiid gets pushed back to the second team. It's not going to be an easy call for voters.

2) Rockets recover from a sluggish start, surge to beat Jazz and extend win streak to 13. Houston had one of the tougher back-to-backs in the NBA: The high altitude combo of Denver Sunday night followed by the Utah Jazz the next night.

Didn't matter, they kept on rolling. Utah had the lead early as the Rockets looked understandably sluggish (and the Jazz are playing well), but Houston found its groove later - Mike D'Antoni went extra small against Rudy Gobert and put Luc Mbah a Moute at center, where he went 7-of-7 and finished with 17 points - and the Rockets won. Their win streak is now at 13 and they remain on top of the Western Conference (one up in the loss column on those pesky Warriors).

James Harden had 26 points on 13 shots, plus pulled down 11 rebounds, and he combined with Chris Paul dominated the game.

Although the best play of the night? Chris Paul tries to dribble the game out in the final seconds, high fives Harden's mom courtside, and gets called out of bounds because she's out of bounds.

Utah has dropped two-of-three out of the All-Star break and remains 1.5 games out of the playoffs in the West (but still have the easiest schedule of anyone in the conference the rest of the way).

3) Kawhi Leonard is coming back to the Spurs lineup in March (we think), and that changes everything. After a week of "what is going on with Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs?" questions, and the inevitable "is this the start of a divorce?" speculation, we learn that Leonard is coming back - both to the Spurs now and the court this March (knocking on wood).

Leonard isn't already all the way back, but after three weeks of meeting with doctors for second opinions in New York (it leaked the team said he was medically cleared, but I have no idea why the team would leak that and damage the relationship), Leonard is going to practice with the team starting soon. The goal is to get on the court in March, play his way into shape, and be ready to go for the playoffs.

If Leonard is back for the playoffs and back to being his MVP-level self, the Spurs just become a much more significant threat in the West. (They're not a contender, but they will be dangerous and would no longer be the team everybody wants in the first round).

As for the overblown speculation about Leonard's future and relationship with the Spurs, I can think of 50 million reasons that gets smoothed over. Leonard is eligible to be offered a "designated veteran" supermax extension this summer (the same deal that Stephen Curry and John Wall got). It would mean an extra guaranteed year and as much $50 million more than any other team can offer - no player offered this full deal yet has turned it down, and I doubt Leonard would be the first. Remember, LaMarcus Aldridge came to Gregg Popovich last summer when he demanded a trade, Pop smoothed it over and Aldridge is an All-Star. He will do the same with Leonard.

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Kobe Bryant's "Musecage" is like if Sesame Street had an NBA film room (VIDEO)

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Every day in the NBA there is a lot to unpack, so every weekday morning throughout the season we will give you the three things you need to know from the last 24 hours in the NBA. 1) Anthony Davis has historic night against Suns, Pelicans win sixth straight.

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He's old, he's wise, he's as ferocious as ever. And in this final phase of his brilliant, checkered, championship-laden career, the man who once called himself "the Valentino of the NBA" has been running his mouth like never before. This interview-the last one he gave before his season-ending injury in late January-was no exception.

"I know who I am," is among the first things Kobe Bryant tells me, which is the kind of statement made only by people who are very, very right or very, very wrong. He tells me this in a breakfast café called Haute Cakes, tucked inside a strip mall in Newport Beach, California. We're fifteen minutes from his house, but I nonetheless mention that this is not the kind of place I expected to meet him. "What did you expect," he asks, "A dungeon?"

It's the first Monday of January. Last night, Bryant hit a floater with 12 seconds on the clock to beat the struggling Indiana Pacers; tonight his team is in Portland, but he's not traveling in order to rest his aging bones. Two days from today, he'll go 2 of 12 against the Clippers as the Lakers fall 18 1/2; games out of first place in the Western Conference; two weeks after that, he'll suffer a rotator-cuff injury that will end his season completely. This will be the most disheartening campaign of his 19-year career-he just doesn't know it yet. I mentally prepare myself for a justifiably surly, potentially uncommunicative sociopath.

My assumptions are wrong.

He walks through the door at 8:40 am. Bryant, who has already been awake for three hours, is a few minutes late for our meeting (broadcaster Stuart Scott had died the day before, so Bryant needed to provide a eulogistic response for ESPN Radio). He sits with his back to the wall, wholly expressionless. My first question is unrelated to sports: On behest of GQ, I'm supposed to get Bryant's feelings on the attention rivals like Russell Westbrook and Dwyane Wade receive for their fashion choices. Mildly amused, he notes that he now tries to be "less fashion forward" (he's wearing camouflage pants as he says this) and that if he dressed like Westbrook ("skinny peddle pushers and low-cut sneakers with a polka-dotted shirt with glasses and a backpack") it would be received as a practical joke. This spills into a banal discussion over branding, which is not a subject I want to talk about. Knowing that Bryant has to leave the café by 10 o'clock, I decide to take a calculated risk: I tell him that there is no point in pretending we're about to have a normal conversation, because nothing about this meeting is remotely normal. I just want to directly ask him all the things I've always wondered about his life. And from the moment I say this, I can tell that this is what he wants, too.

Let's start in the middle: Bryant won five titles with Phil Jackson as his coach and three with Shaquille O'Neal as his teammate. Despite that success, both relationships are largely defined by their complexity. It is widely assumed Shaq and Bryant are not friends, particularly after a 2008 incident in a New York nightclub when O'Neal performed an impromptu freestyle rap requesting that Kobe describe the flavor of his anus. Bryant's trajectory with Jackson has been more nuanced, but deeper and (at times) more painful. Though Jackson has said he views Bryant "like my son," he's also written damaging things about Kobe in multiple books, once classifying him as "uncoachable" and expressing a curious lack of surprise when Bryant was accused of rape in 2003.
Why do you think Jackson would write such negative things about you? Was he trying to psychologically motivate you, or is he just kind of a weird, arrogant person?
Well, most successful people are a little arrogant.... I was very stubborn. I was like a wild horse that had the potential to become Secretariat, but who was just too fucking wild. So part of that was him trying to tame me. He's also very intelligent, and he understood the dynamic he had to deal with between me and Shaq. So he would take shots at me in the press, and I understood he was doing that in order to ingratiate himself to Shaq. And since I knew what he was doing, I felt like that was an insult to my intelligence. I mean, I knew what he was doing. Why not just come to me and tell me that? Another thing was that I would go to him in confidence and talk about certain things, and he would then use those things to manipulate the media against me. And from that standpoint, I finally said, "No way. I'm not gonna deal with that anymore." This was during our first run, during those first three championships. So when he'd come out in the press and say those things about me, I was finally like, "Fuck it. I'm done with this guy. I'll play for him and win championships, but I will have no interaction with him." Yet at the same time, it drove me at a maniacal pace. Because either consciously or unconsciously, he put a tremendous amount of pressure on me to be efficient, and to be great, and to be great now.
When this was happening, did you actively dislike him?
Yeah. ( pause) Yeah. I was like, "Fuck him. I'm out here busting my ass. I'm killing myself." And it became insulting. Because I chose to extend my deal with the Lakers to play with Shaquille O' Neal and win championships. I knew what I could have done individually. I could have gone to another team and averaged 35 points a game. I could have gone anywhere and destroyed people. I gave that up to win championships. So it was infuriating to hear people say I was selfish. It was very, very maddening.
Do you feel like Shaq was publicly rewarded for not working hard? Somehow, the fact that he was a little lazy always came across as charming.
Well, he was [charming]. The perception of him was exactly that. Now it's not. The city of L.A. knows me now, and they know who I am. But at the time, the perception was that Kobe was trying to break up the team. That was wrong. I am a maniacal worker, and if you're not working as hard as I am, I am going to let you know about it. That's why Shaq and I still have a good relationship: He knows I have zero fear of him. I would tell him what he was doing and what he wasn't doing. And vice versa. There were times when we absolutely could not stand each other. We could not be in the same room together. But we challenged the shit out of each other.
So would you say the perception of him being lazy was inaccurate?
He had years where he was lazy. But during those three championships we won? To say he was a beast would be an understatement. To say I didn't learn things from him that I still use to this day would be a disservice. To be fair, I think what happened is that, as you get older, your body starts breaking down, and you have to really love the process in order to get through that. Like, right now, I hurt. My ankle joints, my knee joints. My back. My thighs are sore. But for him, with his big toe and his knee, it became very hard for him to get up in the morning and push through those things. He might not have been as willing to do those things at the time, and I wasn't thrilled about that.

The image of Bryant being less than "thrilled" with the not-so-maniacal work ethic of a teammate has become the center of his persona. Though he will never usurp the greatness of Michael Jordan within the public consciousness, he has likely already surpassed MJ in terms of the terror and antipathy he instills in those who play alongside him. His legacy is littered with the corpses of slackers who could not match his commitment, particularly underachievers of unusual size (Dwight Howard, Andrew Bynum). It has become popular to suggest that his ego-and his two-year, $48.5 million contract-are now actively hurting the franchise. The perception has become so universal that ESPN The Magazine published a story suggesting the Lakers cannot sign top-flight free agents as long as Bryant controls the system. Most of the story's sources were anonymous and Bryant claims he didn't read the article. But he also said he has been asked about it enough to "grasp what it was conceptually," and he certainly doesn't dispute the takeaway.

1 Bryant views branding as a modern form of "storytelling." I note that this comparison is only partially accurate, since branding is a form of storytelling with a conscious commercial purpose. "For some," he concedes. "But that's not a universal thing. That's like saying every wizard within Slytherin House is a villain."

"Does my nature make me less enjoyable to play with? Of course," he says. "Of course it does. Is it possible that some top players in the league are intimidated by that? Yes. But do I want to play with those players? Does the Laker organization want those specific players? No. Magic. Jordan. Bird. We all would have been phenomenal teammates. This organization wants players who will carry this franchise to another five or six championships. The player who does that has to be cut from the same cloth. And if they're not cut from that cloth, they don't belong here."

This self-perpetuating image of Bryant as an unyielding workaholic has become so integral to his ethos that it reflexively informs every other detail about his life. He has become The Last Hard Man, the realest of the real, the lone remnant from a Precambrian NBA era when players still hated each other and the only people who cared about AAU basketball were actual eighth graders. Yet people forget that this was not always the case. As crazy as it now seems, there was a long stretch in the '90s when the principle knock on Bryant was his alleged insincerity. He smiled constantly, spoke Italian, and took Brandy to the prom. He adopted a "plain vanilla" persona modeled after Julius Erving, despite a transparent aspiration to embody the most conventional definition of urban cool; it often came across like Grant Hill trying to impersonate Allen Iverson.

"It wasn't that people thought I was soft," he says, slightly wincing at the implications of the word. "It was more of a street credibility thing: 'He grew up in Italy. He's not one of us.' But what I came to understand, coming out of Colorado, is that I had to be me, in the place where I was at that moment."

Which brings us to the hinge-point in the career of Kobe Bryant: the week he checked into a Colorado hotel room, had sex with a woman who worked there, and was subsequently arrested on a sexual-assault charge. A year later, the charges were dropped and Bryant apologized. But the incident will (obviously) never go away. When Bryant dies, the accusation will probably appear in the second paragraph of his obituary. And he knows this.

"I started to consider the mortality of what I was doing," he says. At the time, he was 24. "What's important? What's not important? What does it mean when everybody loves you, and then everybody hates your guts for something they think you did? So that's when I decided that-if people were going to like me or not like me-it was going to be for who I actually was. To hell with all that plain vanilla shit, just to get endorsement deals. Those are superficial, anyway. I don't enjoy doing them, anyway. I'll just show people who I actually am.... The [loss of the] endorsements were really the least of my concerns. Was I afraid of going to jail? Yes. It was twenty-five to life, man. I was terrified. The one thing that really helped me during that process-I'm Catholic, I grew up Catholic, my kids are Catholic-was talking to a priest. It was actually kind of funny: He looks at me and says, 'Did you do it?' And I say, 'Of course not.' Then he asks, 'Do you have a good lawyer?' And I'm like, 'Uh, yeah, he's phenomenal.' So then he just said, 'Let it go. Move on. God's not going to give you anything you can't handle, and it's in his hands now. This is something you can't control. So let it go.' And that was the turning point."

The reason Bryant needs to leave at 10 A.M. is because he's working on a documentary for Showtime titled Kobe Bryant's Muse. He seems exceedingly interested in filmmaking at the moment, so I ask if he's seen Whiplash. "Of course," he replies. Whiplash is about a psychotic music instructor (J. K. Simmons) who physically abuses and emotionally manipulates a self-driven jazz drummer (Miles Teller) until the teenage musician both collapses and succeeds. Thematically, the film suggests an idea that has been mostly erased from modern popular culture: the possibility that inhumane, unacceptable treatment is sometimes essential to the creation of genius. I ask Bryant what he thought of Whiplash. "That's me," he says, although I can't tell if he means the Simmons character or the Teller character. He might mean the entire movie. In any case, he's acutely aware of the draconian strangeness of his own personality and of the downside to his ambitions, two characteristics he views almost interchangeably.
Do you ever think that the qualities that make you great are actually problems?
Oh, yeah. But the things that make a person average are also problems. The things that make someone not good at anything at all are a problem. If you want to be the greatest of all-time at something, there's going to be a negative side to that. If you want to be a high school principal, that's fine, too-but that will also carry negative baggage.
So how much are you willing to give up? Have you given up the possibility of having friends? Do you have any friends?
I have "like minds." You know, I've been fortunate to play in Los Angeles, where there are a lot of people like me. Actors. Musicians. Businessmen. Obsessives. People who feel like God put them on earth to do whatever it is that they do. Now, do we have time to build great relationships? Do we have time to build great friendships? No. Do we have time to socialize and to hangout aimlessly? No. Do we want to do that? No. We want to work. I enjoy working.

**So is this a choice? Are you actively choosing not to have friends? **

Well, yes and no. I have friends. But being a "great friend" is something I will never be. I can be a good friend. But not a great friend. A great friend will call you every day and remember your birthday. I'll get so wrapped up in my shit, I'll never remember that stuff. And the people who are my friends understand this, and they're usually the same way. You gravitate toward people who are like you. But the kind of relationships you see in movies-that's impossible for me. I have good relationships with players around the league. LeBron and I will text every now and then. KG and I will text every now and then. But in terms of having one of those great, bonding friendships-that's something I will probably never have. And it's not some smug thing. It's a weakness. It's a weakness.
Do you miss the idea of having a great friendship?
Of course. It's not like I'm saying, 'I don't need friends because I'm so strong.' It's a weakness. When I was growing up in Italy, I grew up in isolation. It was not an environment suited to me. I was the only black kid. I didn't speak the language. I'd be in one city, but then we'd move to a different city and I'd have to do everything again. I'd make friends, but I'd never be part of the group, because the other kids were already growing up together. So this is how I grew up, and these are the weaknesses that I have.

Part of what makes interviewing athletes difficult is the way they purposefully misunderstand questions, and the way they ignore certain questions, and the inflexibly straightforward manner in which they answer the handful of queries they perceive as relevant. This is not the case with Kobe. "Me sitting here, doing this interview-I don't have to do this," he says. "Ever since Colorado, I control my shit. If I don't want to do something, I don't fucking do it. Nobody is going to control my career or my life." He is wildly discursive, but never without purpose. At one point, I ask him how the aesthetics of basketball have changed due to the rise of advanced metrics, a trend that has devalued the mid-range jump shot (which, for Bryant, remains a strength). He starts his response by comparing the mid-range game to grunge fashion, arguing that all trends are cyclical and that the mid-range game will eventually return to prominence, just as grunge fashion eventually will (and " GQ and Vogue will have an absolute shit fit" when it does). This drifts into a meditation on popular metrics like "plus-minus," which Bryant sees as a way to measure shifts in momentum without explaining why those shifts occur. He concludes by noting that "guys like Henry Abbott actually are on to something," which is mostly interesting because Henry Abbott is (coincidentally) the same guy who wrote the aforementioned ESPN article about free agents not wanting to go to Los Angeles (the article that Bryant supposedly did not read). A few minutes earlier, I'd asked how he feels about those who think he shoots too much. He responded by comparing himself to an 18th century Austrian.

"I've shot too much from the time I was eight years old," Bryant says. "But 'too much' is a matter of perspective. Some people thought Mozart had too many notes in his compositions. Let me put it this way: I entertain people who say I shoot too much. I find it very interesting. Going back to Mozart, he responded to critics by saying there were neither too many notes or too few. There were as many as necessary."

2 Bryant's father, Joe "Jellybean" Bryant, played pro basketball on four different Italian teams from 1984 to 1991.

Assuming he spends the rest of this season in rehab, Bryant will finish his nineteenth year in the league with 32,482 points, roughly 6,000 fewer than the league's all-time leader, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He expresses no interest whatsoever in that record. "I could play for five or six more years if I wanted to. But I don't. This year and next year is enough. If my goal had been going after Jabbar, I would have done that. I would have gone to a different team and scored 37 (footnote 1) points a game. But that was never my goal. My goal is to sit at the table with Michael and Magic, having won the same number of titles."

That sentiment, of course, raises an inescapable conflict: If Bryant's only goal is winning championships, it makes no sense for him to continue playing in Los Angeles. The team is objectively terrible. But Bryant thinks this is a temporary condition. And while his argument seems implausible, his reasoning is as sublime as it is conspiratorial.
The Lakers are not going to make the playoffs this year, and it seems unlikely that they will challenge for a title next year. So if titles are your only goal, why even play these last two seasons?
I know what Mitch [Kupchak, the Lakers GM] tells me. I know what Jim and Jeanie [Buss, the team owners] tell me. I know that they are hell-bent about having a championship caliber team next season, as am I.
But how could that possibly be done? Doesn't the league's financial system dictate certain limitations?
Well, okay: Look at the [2011] lockout. That lockout was made to restrict the Lakers. It was. I don't care what any other owner says. It was designed to restrict the Lakers and our marketability.
The Lakers specifically, or teams like the Lakers?
There is only one team like the Lakers. Everything that was done with that lockout was to restrict the Lakers' ability to get players and to create a sense of parity, for the San Antonios of the world and the Sacramentos of the world. But a funny thing happened, coming out of that lockout: Even with those restrictions, the Lakers pulled off a trade [for Chris Paul] that immediately set us up for a championship, a run of championships later, and which saved money. Now, the NBA vetoed that trade (footnote 2). But the Lakers pulled that shit off, and no one would have thought it was even possible. The trade got vetoed, because they'd just staged the whole lockout to restrict the Lakers. Mitch got penalized for being smart. But if we could do that...

Bryant is arguing is that the Lakers will just manufacture a competitive roster, through sheer intellectual creativity. Unrestricted free agent LaMarcus Aldridge may be in play. Rajon Rondo (with whom Bryant recently had breakfast) might be on the table. It all seems hopeless, but stranger things have happened. Now, do I totally believe Kobe on this? I'm not sure if I totally believe Kobe. But I know that I want to, and I know that he believes himself. He believes he can do anything, simply through the power of will.

In 2011, Bryant's wife Vanessa filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences. Yet those differences were reconciled, thirteen months later. They remain a married couple. "I'm not going to say our marriage is perfect, by any stretch of the imagination," Kobe says. "We still fight, just like every married couple. But you know, my reputation as an athlete is that I'm extremely determined, and that I will work my ass off. How could I do that in my professional life if I wasn't like that in my personal life, when it affects my kids? It wouldn't make any sense." The logic is weirdly airtight: If we concede that Kobe would kill himself to beat the Celtics, we must assume he'd be equally insane about keeping his family together. And he knows that we know this about him, so he uses that to his advantage.

He knows who he is. He really, really does.

1. I find it amusing that - earlier in the conversation - Bryant had said he could have averaged 35 points a game if he'd gone to a different team. Twenty minutes later, the number he gives is 37. Somehow, he managed to increase his hypothetical nightly average by a basket, just by giving this interview.

2. The official reason given as to why then-commissioner David Stern vetoed the Paul trade was "basketball reasons." Stern was acting on behalf of Paul's former team, the Hornets (then playing in New Orleans), who did not have an owner at the time of the proposed deal.

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Kobe Bryant Will Always Be an All-Star of Talking

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He's old, he's wise, he's as ferocious as ever. And in this final phase of his brilliant, checkered, championship-laden career, the man who once called himself "the Valentino of the NBA" has been running his mouth like never before.

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GiGi!

Kobe Bryant may not have a son to pass the torch to, but clearly that's not going to be an issue for his basketball legacy to carry on. His middle daughter, Gianna, looks to be taking after her father.

Kobe and GiGi were feeling the hype as the Los Angeles Sparks get ready for a WNBA Finals rematch against the Minnesota Lynx. The father-daughter duo hit the gym to enjoy some hoops together, and Gianna is looking more and more like a future superstar.

Let's start here: with Kobe giving his daughter some defensive resistance while she spots up outside. Please take note of the shoulder nudge and rip through move:

Close out too hard on the real Mini Mamba (sorry Andrew Goudelock), and she'll take you to the rack:

And if you missed it back in May, here she is putting in some more work:

She may have a future as a hooper, and she might have a great mentor to pull inspiration from.

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Watch: Kobe Bryant's daughter is ready to drop 81 on you

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Kobe Bryant may not have a son to pass the torch to, but clearly that's not going to be an issue for his basketball legacy to carry on. His middle daughter, Gianna, looks to be taking after her father.

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Kobe Bryant, His Wife And Beautiful Daughters All Watched His No. 8 And 24 Lakers Jerseys Being Retired Last Night

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Black mamba last game with Lakers

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Thousands packed outside the Staples Center hours before the game started to celebrate Kobe

The Lakers ended their regular season with a 101-96 victory against the Utah Jazz

Kobe's final game began with a video featuring tributes from Lamar Odom and Jack Nicholson

Magic Johnson delivered a speech calling Kobe 'the biggest and greatest celebrity' LA has had for 20 years

Kobe scored 23 points in the fourth-quarter and recorded the season-high for all players in the 2015-2016 season

Kobe Bryant gave Los Angeles one last night to remember, scoring 60 points on 50 shots in his final game after a 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Purple and gold balloons and streamers rained down on the Staples Center as the city said goodbye to Black Mamba after a 101-96 victory against the Utah Jazz.

'You can't write something better than this,' Kobe said after the game. 'You guys will always be in my heart.'

'What can I say? Mamba out.'

Bryant hugged his former teammate Shaquille O'Neal in the final seconds of the game after scoring 23 points in the fourth quarter of his 1,346th game with the Lakers.

His final 3-pointer was a storybook finish to a career that had recently been plagued with injury after injury and a game that saw the Lakers trailing behind the Jazz for most of the night.

But as his teammates continued to feed him the ball, Kobe said all he could do was take on the challenge, seeming to clinch victory for his team after one final 3-pointer that was followed by a dunk from Jordan Clarkson.

The NBA's third highest all-time scorer with five championship rings ended his career with one final mark in the history books - the player to score the most points in his last game.

He also recorded the season-high for all players in the 2015-16 season.

'Man, I can't believe how fast 20 years went by,' Kobe told the crowd at the end of the game.

'It's crazy, absolutely crazy to be standing here on the same court with you guys, with my teammates behind me.'

'I appreciate the journey we have been on, there have been a few ups and downs but the most important part is that we all stayed together throughout.'

'All I can do here is thank you guys for all the years of support, all the years of inspiration. This has been unbelievable. I can't believe it has come to an end,' he said, before gold and purple confetti descended from the ceiling.

Kobe announced his plans to retire from the Lakers nearly six months ago, but that didn't make it any easier for fans to say goodbye when the time came for his final game.

Thousands packed shoulder-to-shoulder into the plaza outside Staples Center hours before the jump ball. Most didn't even have tickets to the game.

But it was enough to be near the legend who had led their team for the last two decades.

Before the game began, Magic Johnson pumped up the crowd with a rousing speech in which he called Bryant 'the biggest and greatest celebrity we've had in this town for 20 years'.

'We are here to celebrate greatness,' Johnson, like Bryant a five-time NBA champion, told the sellout crowd. 'For 20 years, excellence. For 20 years, Kobe Bryant has never cheated the game, he has never cheated us as fans.

'He has played through injury, he has played hurt and we have five championships banners to show for it.'

Huge roars then rang out as the Lakers fans gave Bryant thunderous approval.

'He is not only a great sport icon but also the greatest to wear the purple and gold,' Johnson continued.

'So right now we should put our hands together for the late great (former Lakers owner) Jerry Buss for trading for this man.'

Another video tribute to Bryant was then played on the Jumbotron suspended from the rafters at Staples Center, ending with the words 'Congratulations on 20 years in the Purple and Gold' emblazoned on the screen.

Individual video tributes from former team mates and opponents such as LeBron James, Pau Gasol, Stephen Curry, Dirk Nowitzki and Carmelo Anthony were played and Kobe's former coach Phil Jackson called him the 'ambassador of basketball'.

Notorious Lakers fan Jack Nicholson joked he might retire along with Bryant.

'You've been an inspiration to us all,' he concluded. 'LA loves you.'

When the video ended, Bryant embraced Johnson, then saluted the crowd with claps and a wave.

At that point, further chants of 'Kobe, Kobe, Kobe' rang out from the crowd as Johnson walked across to embrace Bryant and share a few private words.

Black Mamba then walked out to center court, applauding the fans with his hands raised high, then lifted his right arm in tribute before blowing kisses to the crowd.

Kobe then returned to the bench, gave trainer Gary Vitti - also retiring - a huge hug, then wrapped his arms around coach Byron Scott before returning to the court to resume warming up for the game some fans had paid thousands of dollars to attend.

Demand for Wednesday night seats were sky high, with tickets being sold on secondary markets for prices anywhere from $700 to $10,000.

According to Stubhub, owned by eBay and the largest online ticket resale site in the United States, the most expensive seat sold for Wednesday's game went for $27,500.

And while Kobe was the biggest star of the night there were plenty of celebrity fans packing the stands - including Jay Z, Kanye West and Snoop Dogg.

Although the night ended in victory it started off slow for Kobe - who missed his first five shots.

But Black Mamba was soon on fire. He scored 37 points through the first three-quarters of the game, including the 10,000th free throw of his regular-season career.

It was just one more milestone to add to his record books, as Kobe is the first non-post player to shoot that many.

Kobe will also be the only player in the NBA to have ever spent 20 seasons with the same team.

'It means everything to finish at home,' Kobe said earlier this week.

'I grew up a die-hard Laker fan, so it's like a dream come true for a kid to grow up and play for his favorite team, and play here for 20 years, his entire career,' he added.

'I've seen the city grow. I've seen the city develop, and vice versa. There's no place I'd rather end my career.'

Drafted out of high school at the age of 17, Kobe recalled watching the same faces in the crowd grow older - turning from kids to bringing their own kids.

This last season hasn't been an easy one. Kobe's career will end with the worst team in Lakers history thanks to a 16-65 record.

But the legend said the fact that the team won't be playing for a championship has actually made it easier for his to enjoy his farewell tour.

'I've allowed myself to take the blinders off and enjoy the fans, enjoy the crowd,' he said.

'Laugh a little bit more. Engage a little bit more.'

Indeed, the Lakers' recent games effectively have been tribute evenings for Bryant, with opponents shaking his hand and lining up for turns to guard a player who profoundly inspired most of the current NBA.

'It is hard to be great for that long,' said Miami's Dwyane Wade, his US Olympic teammate.

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'He has been great for maybe 19 out of 20 years. To do it at that level for so many years, with guys coming after you, I have a tremendous amount of respect for that.'

'He's had a lot of injuries along the way, and he just came back stronger and stronger.'

When Bryant was asked to name his greatest basketball accomplishment Monday, he didn't cite his five championship rings.

Instead, he chose his ability to find the motivation to return from three consecutive season-ending injuries from 2013-15.

And on his final night, the only thing Kobe wanted was a tough game.

'For me, it's coming out in front of the fans and competing hard, and playing against Utah and them not taking it easy at all,' he said.

'To me, that is the greatest form of competition. That's the best last game to have. A very competitive one. A physical one. That's the way basketball should be.'

Kobe said in November that this last season was all 'I have left to give', in an open letter to the sport he posted on The Players Tribune.

'I can't love you obsessively for much longer,' Bryant said in the letter titled 'Dear Basketball'.

'My heart can take the pounding, my mind can handle the grind, but my body knows it's time to say goodbye.'

In his essay, Bryant talked about being a boy who would use his father's rolled-up socks to shoot imaginary game-winning shots at the Great Western Forum, where the Lakers played from 1967 to 1999.

Bryant said it was those early moments where he fell in love with basketball.

'A love so deep I gave you my all,' he writes. 'From my mind and body, to my spirit and soul.'

Bryant then revealed how he gave basketball his heart because 'that's what you do, when someone makes you feel as alive as you've made me feel.

'I ran up and down every court after every loose ball for you,' he writes. 'You asked for my hustle, I gave you my heart. Because it came with so much more.'

'I played through the sweat and hurt. Not because challenge called me, but because you called me.'

'I did everything for you.'

He then thanked basketball for giving that six-year-old boy who used to shoot socks his 'Laker dream' before promising the sport he would always love it. 'I'm ready to let you go,' wrote Bryant.

'I want you to know now,' he then says, as if almost speaking to his fans. 'So we both can savor every moment we have left together. The good and the bad.'

'We have given each other all that we have.'

Bryant was drafted out of high school with the 13th overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Hornets but was traded shortly after to the Lakers.

He has appeared in 17 All-Star games, was named the Most Valuable Player for the 2007-08 regular season and landed MVP honors in the 2009 and 2010 Finals when he led the Lakers to consecutive championships.

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Kobe Bryant scores 60 POINTS and wins final game with LA Lakers

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Thousands packed outside the Staples Center hours before the game started to celebrate Kobe The Lakers ended their regular season with a 101-96 victory against the Utah Jazz Kobe's final game began with a video featuring tributes from Lamar Odom and Jack Nicholson Magic Johnson delivered a speech calling Kobe

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Pro basketball player Kobe Bryant has won five NBA titles with the Los Angeles Lakers while establishing himself as one of the game's greatest scorers.

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Kobe Bryant Mix - "I'm The One" DJ KHALED, JUSTIN BIEBER, QAUVO etc. I do not own any content in this video. "Heroes come and go but legends are forever." - Kobe Bryant

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thanks for watching ... rate and comment !!! plz subscribe + http://www.youtube.com/user/MrJOBoner?feature=mhee "Absolutely no copyright infringement is intended. All audio and video clips are the sole property of their respective owners. This is only clipped for entertainment."

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Music: Can't Hold Us Mix As always, cuz it's my favorite Leave a life if you enjoyed

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Kobe short story