The farewell was his style. A microcosm of Kobe Bryant, a 48-minute condensed that somehow reproduced the modulation of one of the greatest NBA careers. A so-so start, with a lot of courage and many mistakes, and then the victory in the final, on the wire, with his signature on all the decisive baskets. In his future, it seems, there will be an acting career.
The hero has come to the end of his journey after twenty seasons, five rings and a reckless number of shots taken, scored and missed. The last leg was against the Utah Jazz, the same team that, in 1997, marked the baptism of fire of an 18-year-old Kobe, who hurled four airballs towards the opponent's basket between the fourth quarter and overtime, in the fatal defeat of the Lakers in the semifinals of the Western Conference.
The last chapter was consistent with the rest of the story, with what Kobe had told us until yesterday. It was excessive, exhausting just to look at (let alone doing it), full of mistakes and greatness. It was, as often happened to him, winning. Fierce, and how can you be so fierce at 37, after winning everything there was to be won, in a race that had nothing to say other than celebration, is a mystery that reveals all there is to know about Kobe. The best explanation of his success.
The Lakers won, Kobe won. With his signature in the final minutes, the overtaking basket was thirty seconds from the end. The last bite of the Mamba, probably the most lethal of the NBA champions, certainly the hungriest.
The circle comes full circle in a Kobe Way, with fifty shots e sixty points. Numbers that only him. The last time anyone had shot that many in an unfinished game in Overtime it was always him, the night he posted 81 against Toronto. Obviously no one had ever scored so many points at his age.
For him it was important to win, even if it didn't count for anything. But it was his needed farewell letter to a Staples Center filled with stars (from Jack Nicholson to David Beckham, from Jay-Z to Magic Johnson), tears and love. Everyone wanted to be there, to witness the story and try to be part of it, at least for a small piece, on the day of the last stage of the lap of honor that transformed one of the most hated players in basketball history (as also underlined by the very witty commercial Nike in which Bryant directs his "haters like members of an orchestra) to the applause of all the arenas of the League.
That's what happens to the older ones. Even to those who beat us, humiliated us and snapped us in the neck. When we know they will go away, when they are no longer so scary, we begin to love them, and rightly so.
And to explain Kobe's greatness, perhaps, it is enough to know that today we talk almost exclusively about him, even if on the night i Golden State Warriors, a few miles away (at least by US standards) from LA they got theirs 73rd victory season by beating the Memphis Grizzlies 125 to 104 and becoming part of NBA history.
No one had ever won so many games in a single season. Not even Michael Jordan, who somehow, even years later, on the night when his only true heir greets everyone, remains the perennial reference of NBA greatness, and who stopped at 72, with his Chicago Bulls, in 1995-'96.
But maybe that's the beauty of it, in the end. That history is a cycle that is always renewed, and on the day when Kobe Bryant's basketball epic closes its doors, the narration of the story already begins, a legend in the making, of the Golden State of Stephen Curry.
