Confident until the very end, Kobe Bryant called the Lakers beating the Jazz in the final game of is career
If there’s one thing that Kobe Bryant never lacked throughout his Hall-of-Fame career with the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s indubitably confidence. Whether you accepted his leadership style, loved or hated him, or wanted him to retire sooner than he did, you could never doubt the confidence of Kobe.
And Bryant held onto that confidence all the way up until the absolute final game of his career.
Kobe’s final game was against the Utah Jazz on the last day of the season while the Jazz were jockeying for a playoff spot at the eight-seed with the Houston Rockets. With a Jazz loss to the Lakers in Bryant’s career-finale, though, Houston would make it into the postseason. So ahead of that game, former Lakers teammate and current Rockets forward Trevor Ariza was talking to Bryant.
As Ariza recounted on Sirius XM NBA on Wednesday (alongside Jason Terry), Bryant told the forward that he and the Rockets didn’t need to worry as he was going to take care of the Jazz. As we all know, that’s exactly what Kobe did as he dropped a 60-spot in the final game of his career to get the Lakers the win:
Who knew that Kobe nighted as Nostradamus?
In all fairness, perhaps the most impressive part of Kobe predicting the win is that he had the confidence to do so when the Lakers had only won 16 games on the entire season to that point and while Bryant was largely abysmal for most of the regular season. He’s always had confidence, but that truly takes it to another level.
Either way, that’s yet another legendary story to add to the catalog of the many that are out there about Kobe Bryant—just another reason why he’s Lakers royalty forever.