Kobe Bryant will be the youngest player in NBA history when he makes his professional debut. In his last assignment, the basketball legend scored 60 points. His death two years ago today not only puts the sports world in deep mourning. An obituary in facts and figures.
When Kobe Bryant announced the end of his career in November 2015, he did so with a poem. In “Dear Basketball” the exceptional professional wrote down his love for the game, to which he had subordinated everything for decades. His work ethic is legendary, with countless stories told by companions of how he was often the first to show up for training and the last to leave the gym. How he was looking for a basket late at night after bad games to work on himself.
On January 26, 2020, Kobe Bryant passed away at the age of 41, as one of nine victims of a helicopter crash in Los Angeles. Also on board was his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, who wanted to follow in his footsteps and, like her father, was aiming for a basketball career. They were on their way to the sports academy he founded. Bryant is survived by his wife Vanessa and three daughters.
A baseball coach with his wife and daughter, a woman with her daughter, a basketball coach and the pilot all crashed with them. Not only the sports world was in shock. Bryant’s influence stretched well beyond the NBA and basketball, he was a global icon. Despite his argumentative character, despite never fully resolved rape allegations from 2003.
Because Bryant lived for his sport, because he was obsessed with basketball. Because he excelled in his 20 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers in an NBA that keeps records more precisely than almost any other league. Every game, every minute of the game, every shot – everything is recorded statistically. This paints a picture of the impression the professional has made in his 1,346 regular season games and 220 playoff games. It was clear long before his career ended that he would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this summer.
Bryant’s final tweet is a congratulations to LeBron James. The former Lakers Superstar congratulates the current Lakers Superstar on overtaking him on the list of the hardest-working points earners in NBA history. In Philadelphia, Bryant’s hometown, James passed – in the all-time ranking the “Black Mamba”, as he called himself, is now in fourth place with 33,643 points, from 1996 to 2016 Bryant scored an average of 24.99 points per game. In December 2014, he overtook Michael Jordan, who many considered the “GOAT” (Greatest Of All Time).
Not only in the regular season was Bryant always able to score points on the assembly line. In the postseason, the playoffs, when it came to titles, Bryant increased his nightly yield again – to an average of 25.6 points. He reached the playoffs 15 times with the Lakers, seven times the NBA Finals, five times “Purple & Gold”, as the team from the Californian metropolis, which plays in golden yellow and purple, is also called, lifted the coveted Larry O’Brien trophy as champion in the height.
If you want to hit a lot, you also have to throw a lot. And so it is not surprising that Kobe – the big stars are often called by their first names – did not hit many shots. Exactly 26,200 times Bryant sent the orange ball on its way to the basket, 14,481 times it did not land in the net but on the ring, on the board, missed its target completely as an airball or was blocked. And just for the sake of completeness: Bryant is sixth in the NBA ranking of the most successful throws. Michael Jordan is the only player ahead of him who also played as a guard. In front of the two are four players, all of whom are taller and heavier and therefore usually play closer to the basket.
January 22, 2006, Staples Center, Los Angeles. The Lakers welcome the Toronto Raptors, but above all Kobe Bryant asks his opponents to dance. One raptor after another tries to stop the number 8. After a few days earlier Bryant had scored 62 points in just three quarters in Dallas – and thus more than the entire Mavericks team – he is now pulling through. He hits 28/46 throws from the field, including seven threes. He steps on the free-throw line 20 times and sinks 18 attempts. In the end, Bryant has 81 points – the second-highest result ever achieved by a single player in the NBA. Only the legendary Wilt Chamberlain was more successful in his 100-point game. However: Bryant scored almost two-thirds of his team’s points, which not even Chamberlain had managed to do.
The 81-point game was part of a season in which Bryant enjoyed more freedom offensively than ever before and since. He looked for his own conclusion more than 27 times per game – in no other season did Kobe have more than 23.2 throws per game. His season average of 35.4 points per evening was only surpassed in the modern NBA by Michael Jordan (37.1 in the 1986/1987 season). In that one 2005-06 season alone, Bryant scored more than 50 points six times, a total of 25 times in his career. The last was also his last NBA game when he said goodbye to active basketball against the Utah Jazz with 60 points and the legendary saying “Mamba Out”.
The NBA keeps a close eye on the money. All salaries are public because the salary cap dictates exactly how much each team is allowed to invest in their roster each season. On the one hand, the income comes from a league pot that the 30 franchises divide among themselves. However, every team markets itself – and thanks to its proximity to Hollywood, the Lakers belong to the world of the rich and beautiful and have always been one of the clubs that don’t have to worry about how to pay their bills. As a result, Kobe Bryant appears at the top of the list of the highest-paid professionals. This is also due to the fact that the upper salary limit has increased significantly in his 20 years in the NBA. While $24.363 million was available for the full squad in 1996/97, it was $70 million in 2015/16. Last season, thanks to a generous new TV contract, the salary cap broke the $100 million mark for the first time.
Straight from high school to the best league in the world: When Kobe Bryant was first drafted by the Charlotte Hornets and then traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in June 1996, he was 17 years old. In August he celebrated his 18th birthday, in November he was the youngest debutant in NBA history at the age of 18 years and 72 days. Almost four weeks later he broke that record again, but almost a quarter of a century later, Bryant is still the third youngest professional ever to play. However, this is also due to the fact that since 2006 only those who turn 19 in the year of talent development are eligible for the draft. But Bryant still holds an age record: he is still the youngest player ever to be called up to the starting five: on January 28, 1997 at the age of 18 years and 158 days.
As I said at the very beginning, the NBA records every minute. Also in the truest sense of the word. However, numbers like the 48,637 minutes Kobe Bryant played in his 1,346 regular-season games are far too big to imagine. That corresponds to 810 hours. Still sounds like a number that is not really tangible? It’s 33.8 days — more than a full month that Bryant would play through just lining up his NBA regular-season appearances. In addition, there are 8641 playoff minutes, so the equivalent of another 6 days. And that’s just the games. The minutes, hours and days that Kobe spent on the training fields are many times that value.
“How many kids can say they played for their favorite team and spent their whole career there,” Bryant enthused in 2016 after his last game for the Lakers, stating, “You can’t write this story any better.” In the all-time NBA ranking of “One-Team-Wonder”, Bryant is actually only surpassed by another basketball icon: Dirk Nowitzki, who even played 21 seasons for the Dallas Mavericks – one more than Bryant for his Lakers.
Bryant is a basketball legend. His name is familiar even to those who have never had anything to do with this game. For many current NBA pros, he’s one of the reasons they started working for their careers. They honored him in a very special way on the day of his death. In his career, Bryant first wore the number 8, and later the 24. It just so happens that there are two elementary rules for NBA attacks: Within eight seconds, the ball must be dribbled or passed from your own half into the opposing half and a conclusion must be reached after a maximum of 24 seconds. Numerous teams deliberately broke both rules in the days after Bryant’s death at the start of the game, letting the time pass idly. To pay their respects to the late legend.
This text first appeared on January 27, 2020 – the statistics have been updated.
