Kobe Bryant after 35 minutes of play: ‘Right now, I’m barely standing up’
Kobe Bryant looked fantastic on Sunday night.
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He was moving the ball, and moving without the ball. He wasn’t calling for it 27 feet away from the hoop, and attempting a Stephen Curry impersonation. Even if his Lakers hadn’t won, Bryant still would have turned in his best game of the season – he managed 17 points with nine assists and eight rebounds in a season-high 35 minutes. And his Lakers did win, topping a tired Detroit Pistons team with a 97-85 conquest at home.
Seemingly flush with energy, working just his second game in seven days while out of the building that he knows the best, Bryant would appear ready to take on the final 72 games of his season, righto? To have a sense of how, exactly, to work those 37-year old legs on into the winter, correct?
It does not appear as if this is the case.
“Right now, I’m barely standing up. My back and my legs, man, it’s killing me.”
“I’m not looking forward to walking to the car,” Bryant said, quickly answering reporters’ laughter after he said it. “Seriously.”
Bryant will not travel with the Lakers as they head into Phoenix for a Monday matchup against the Suns. It will act as his third missed game of the season, as the Lakers credit back and knee woes for Bryant’s absence. “Back and knee woes” being, of course, the thing that tend to get all of us as we approach a certain age.
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The NBA has never had an age like Kobe’s. He entered the league straight out of high school and was playing into June by the time he hit 21. No other guard has played 20 seasons in the league, no other player of Bryant’s size has worked over 47,000 career regular season minutes, and in the age of seven game first round series’ Kobe’s nearly 8700 postseason minutes (that’s 39 minutes a game) have taken a toll.
And, if we’re honest, Kobe’s “best game of the season” really wasn’t all that great.
He needed 19 shots to get those 17 points, in 36 minutes. It’s true that he wasn’t as demanding of the ball as he was in his previous seven contests, but that’s on a relative, “Kobe isn’t looking to hit someone”-scale. Bryant turned the ball over four times and while Los Angeles’ defense was in proper shape, Kobe’s was not. The crowd, having watched Kobe airball his way through the Eastern Conference last week via Time Warner, was not on his side at times.
He’s suffered season-ending injuries in three consecutive seasons, and that minutes pileup is on the record even after taking in the fact that Bryant has played just 49 NBA games over the last 31 months. The Lakers aren’t making the playoffs and the season ends some five months and 72 games from now.
Will Bryant stick the season out?
Come on. Kobe isn’t the sort of guy that walks away in December. The Lakers would no doubt secure the remainder of his $25 million 2015-16 salary were Bryant to retire midseason, but that really isn’t the concern. Bryant doesn’t want a farewell tour, he’s already talked up playing for Team USA in the Olympics this summer, and he’s yet to confirm retirement plans even though just about everyone around him (including the team that signed him to a two-year, $48.5 million extension) seems to be urging him to wrap it up in a tidy package.
Between now and April (or July), we’re just going to be treated to more of this, one supposes. The idea that Kobe Bryant, who had played just once in the seven days prior to Sunday night, will have a pained walk to his waiting car after working 35 minutes against a Pistons team that had played the night before.
More honest evaluations about what those five rings and over 55,000 minutes of life as a Los Angeles Laker can do to you.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
