That superstar, of course, was Kobe Bryant, who announced Sunday that this season would be his last in the National Basketball Association.
Advertisement
After that, the night unraveled. “I think there’s a lot of meaning in that in and of itself”.
One more defeat for the Sixers on Tuesday – 0-18 heading into the game – would have given them sole possession of the record for the worst start to a season in National Basketball Association history. Scored 22 points on 12 first-half turnovers.
NEW ORLEANS – Marc Gasol scored a career-high 38 points, including all 16 free-throw attempts, and grabbed 13 rebounds to power Memphis past New Orleans.
“There’s going to be some games like that”, Coach Byron Scott said on the Time Warner Cable SportsNet postgame show, “that you’re going to just live and die with it, and you’re just hoping you don’t die too much”.
Julius Randle had 15 points and a career-best 19 rebounds for the Lakers (3-15), who snapped a seven-game losing streak.
The night before, Bryant opened the first leg of his farewell tour in his hometown of Philadelphia, where the Lakers lost to the previously winless 76ers. Brown also said the team has gone to great lengths to educate its young players about the pitfalls that await them outside the arena. Some typical Philadelphia late-game struggles helped Los Angeles whittle down the lead to eight points, but consecutive late baskets by Hollis Thompson and Jahlil Okafor put things out of reach. “It was something that kind of evolved over the last three years, you know, with the Achilles injury, that really frightened me”, the 37-year-old athlete told Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts. They did so perhaps because they kicked themselves for not picking him in 1996, bypassing Kobe (as 11 other teams bypassed him) for Allen Iverson, himself a future Hall of Famer but lacking a single ring to Bryant’s five.
He said it would be “an honor” to remain involved with the Lakers organization in some capacity.
Advertisement
I’ll admit, I was never the biggest fan of Kobe.
