The Lakers arrived at training camp for the 2012-13 season with good reason to be optimistic. The team had followed its championship in 2010 with two seasons in which it lost in the Western Conference Semifinals to the Mavericks and Thunder, respectively. It was time to re-load, and the team did just that by going all out to win “now” at the expense of the future.
Hoops Habit
They made a big splash by trading for Steve Nash and Dwight Howard in the offseason. They would join a starting line-up that already included Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and Metta World Peace. The only question was whether the Lakers would win two championships or three with this line up.
Things did not work out as planned. The team did not win a single preseason game. When the season started Nash was quickly injured, and while no one realized it at the time, that injury pretty much ended his Laker career before it even began. Howard was coming off back surgery and was still hurting. Things were so bad so fast that Mike Brown was fired a few games into the season and replaced not by Phil Jackson, who apparently wanted the job, but by Mike D’Antoni. During the course of the season, the team was decimated by injuries.
Still, 2012-13 will be remembered for Bryant’s renaissance and what will likely turn out to be his last hurrah, which ended with the unfortunate injury that would threaten his career. At age 34, Bryant averaged 27 points on 46% shooting, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists per game. He was able to attack the rim like he hadn’t done in recent years, and he was able to elevate over whomever was defending him. Some credited special knee treatments he received in Germany for the resurgence, but whatever it was, Bryant was as good as ever that season, maybe better.
On March 8, 2013 against the Toronto Raptors, Bryant had one of the best games of his career. He finished with 41 points, 12 assists, and 6 rebounds. Parenthetically, Howard scored 24 points and Nash 22 points that night, in what might have been the best game the Lakers ever played with the three of them on the court together. But it was Bryant who stole the show and won the game in spectacular fashion.
The Lakers’ started that season nothing but losses and struggled all year to get back to .500. They had a losing record for most of the season, and without a furious finish they would not make the playoffs at all. As the season was winding down, every game was critical. The Lakers could no longer afford a single loss.
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This was the setting when the Lakers played the Raptors on that early March night in the Staples Center. As was a troubling pattern for the team all season, they played poorly at the outset and fell behind. They trailed for most of the game, and with three minutes remaining it looked like Toronto would win and the Lakers’ playoff chances would take a serious hit.
That is when Bryant took over.
First, he hit an impossible fall-away three point shot with the defender draped all over him and the clock expiring. Then, on the next possession, he took an out-of-bounds pass in the corner and drained another incredible three point shot. However, despite both shots, with eight second remaining in the game, the Lakers still trailed by three.
Everyone in the arena knew the ball would go to Bryant who would take the last shot no matter what. Toronto took no chances and assigned two defenders to shadow Bryant on the out-of-bounds pass. Bryant ran around frantically trying to get open. He finally got the ball at least a full 30 feet from the basket. As one of the defenders went flying by him and the other was a step behind, Bryant hurled the ball towards the basketball. It went in and the score was tied sending the game into overtime.
The score was still tied in overtime with the clock again about to expire. Bryant had the ball at the top of the key as time ran down. The expectation was that he would heave up another long shot at the very end. The Raptors thought the same thing, so they sent a second defender to cover Bryant at the top of the key. Just as the second defender arrived , Bryant drove around him to the right using that player to shield the other defender, and Bryant headed straight to the basket where he elevated for a savage dunk that won the game for the Lakers. There are no words to describe what patrons that day had witnessed from Bryant. As he left the court a joyous Nash hugged him as if he had witnessed a miracle.
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We know now that Bryant would tear his Achilles tendon a few games later and his season, and for all intents and purposes his career, was over. It has been only two years since his incredible game against Toronto, but it seems like a decade. With Bryant watching from the sidelines (or a hospital bed), the team was swept in the playoffs that season and has since suffered two consecutive horrific years unlike any we’ve ever experienced with this team.
There was a time when we all thought Bryant was immortal, that he could play at a high level forever. We could not even imagine a day when Bryant would be unable keep up with younger players and would struggle to get open and hit even ordinary shots. Yet in the last three seasons – a period of two years – he has suffered season-ending injuries to his Achilles tendon, knee, and shoulder, and as a result the Bryant we knew is gone. It is no disgrace, it only means he is human after all and there is no escaping the effects of growing older.
While it is important for the Lakers to live in the present if they are to figure out how to regain their prior stature, every once in a while we can afford to allow our minds to drift back to better days. When we do, that magical Bryant moment on March 8, 2013 is one of the games we will always remember.