Kobe Bryant ready for his final Celtics-Lakers faceoff

https://www.bostonherald.com/2016/04/03/kobe-bryant-ready-for-his-final-celtics-lakers-faceoff/




Kobe Bryant ready for his final Celtics-Lakers faceoff





BRYANT: Closing the books on his 19-year NBA career, he leaves with a 1-1 Finals record against the Celtics — and a deep appreciation for both the Boston franchise and its epic rivalry with his Lakers.



By MARK MURPHY | markr.murphy@bostonherald.com | Boston Herald
PUBLISHED: April 3, 2016 at 12:00 am | UPDATED: January 26, 2020 at 3:31 pm



Editor’s note: The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers have been at the center of one of the biggest and, at times, fiercest rivalries in all of sports. That’s why, in 2015-16, on his farewell tour, it was such a big deal when the Celtics presented Lakers legend Kobe Bryant with a ceremonial gift prior to his final game at the Garden in December 2015.

In April 2016, ahead of the C’s final trip of the Bryant era to Los Angeles, Herald reporter Mark Murphy caught up with Bryant and talked with him about his connection to — and affection for — Boston and its basketball history.
Here is that story, in its entirety, from April 3, 2016:



LOS ANGELES — Kobe Bryant pins his Celtics fixation on his childhood in Italy, in the age before NBA globalization.

“I grew up on Lakers and Celtics. When I was growing up in Italy there were no NBA games on, nothing was global, so all you could watch was Celtics and the Lakers, and that whole rivalry,” he said last week, turning his thoughts to today’s game — his final go against the Celtics.


Someone wave a green jersey in front of the Lakers star. He’s ready to charge.

“Now having a chance to be a part of (the rivalry) and playing them one more time, and seeing that green? It’s extremely important,” Bryant said, “It’s special — so, so special.”

Perhaps that’s why Bryant was not only surprised, but moved when the trio of Danny Ainge and Celtics owners Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca presented him with a square of the Garden’s parquet floor prior to a Dec. 30 game, his final in Boston.

Bryant requested that teams not present gifts during his so-called retirement tour. But when the Celtics sent word of their plan, the two-time league scoring champion requested that the presentation be made in private, off the playing floor.

“I put it in my home office. Right in the center,” he said. “I mean, that means more to me than Danny would even know.


“I was very surprised. Watching the Celtics taught me so much about the game. I mean, I studied Bird religiously, I studied D.J. religiously. Russell, Cousy, Jo Jo, I mean I watched those guys (on tape). I watched the difference in basketball between the Lakers and the Celtics. Red Auerbach’s system, and how he would raise the young guys and the culture he created, and the culture that we created. Why did the Celtics win? How were they able to win?”

Bryant figured out the riddle in a very public way, first by losing to the Celtics in six games during the 2008 NBA Finals, and then by beating them in seven games in 2010.

This was a pivotal time in Bryant’s career, because the 2009 and 2010 Lakers championships were validation that he could win without Shaquille O’Neal. The Celtics, and the raucous nature of the Garden crowd, helped send him there.

A redefining defeat

Like LeBron James, Bryant adores the Garden crowd for what they stir in him. It’s a tad masochistic, but he appreciates this bizarre hybrid of hate and respect.

“People might overlook that, but Kobe doesn’t,” Clippers and former Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “People may overlook that, but Kobe says it: ‘That Celtics loss changed my career. It changed me. I’ve never been more devastated. I decided that will never happen again.’

“It redefined him. It allowed him to win without Shaq and all the other guys. It showed people that Kobe is the guy, too. That was important. It defined him because they got their ass kicked physically by us, and they came back and won back-to-back. It drove him to those.”

Asked about that, Bryant dropped his voice.

“It forced me to be a better leader,” he said. “In 2008 what I learned was that my leadership, I felt, was what failed us as a team. I had built our team to be a very strong, cohesive unit, but I hadn’t built our team to beat the toughness of the Celtics. It forced me to find a balance between building a cohesive and positive environment, and yet building a very tough, tested team. It pushed me to be a better leader.”

The word “toughness” doesn’t come lightly. Bryant knew Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen as opponents for years, but the 2008 series changed his relationship with the Big Three. For one thing, they were no longer individuals. They were a unit.

“Oh yeah. It was the greatest challenge and the most fun because I knew how competitive they were, how nasty they were,” he said. “I knew they were intelligent, I knew they were prepared, I knew they studied. And they had quite a few of those guys. They had Ray — Rondo. Those guys were nasty.”

But so was Bryant. Out of the ashes of 2008, and the Celtics’ Game 6 celebration on their own floor, came the resolve that led to the Lakers’ 2009 Finals win over Orlando. And when the Celtics, hamstrung by Garnett’s failing knee in 2009, came roaring back in 2010 to again face the C’s in the Finals, it only added to Bryant’s appreciation for the greatest rivalry in basketball.

Bryant began a long history lesson as a Lakers rookie. Like the Celtics, the Lakers have a list of Hall of Famers who are seemingly on call.

“I talked to them all the time,” he said. “When I came here I was a kid in a candy store. They had Elgin (Baylor) walking around, they had Jerry (West) walking around — they had all of the legends that I could literally speak to face-to-face.”

As Bryant learned more about the rivalry, he looked for perspective from the other side.

“I cold called Bill Russell one day,” he said. “I read his book. There were questions I wanted to ask, and he’s been a great mentor of mine ever since. It’s been amazing.”

Touched by the gods?

Ainge laughed when asked about Bryant’s reverence for Celtics/Lakers history, and the overwhelming reception the Lakers star received from the Garden crowd on Dec. 30.

“If would be fun if these two teams were in the Finals every year, but they’re not,” the Celtics president of basketball operations said. “Could you really imagine our fans cheering Kobe if we were competing against them for a championship?”

These championship battles have happened enough, according to Bryant, to exist on a level beyond the rest.

“There’s certain franchises that are touched, whether by the sports gods or whatever you want to call it,” he said. “The Celtics and the Lakers seem to be those franchises.

“It’s smart decision-making. Red Auerbach and how he built the team in those days, and how he constructed it once Bird came around. Same thing with the Lakers. If you look at the history of our teams and the franchises, the cultures of the teams are all the same.

“The era changes, but the coaching stays the same. The one-two punch of Jerry/Wilt. Now they had other players around them, but it was Jerry/Wilt, Jabbar/Magic, Kobe/Shaq, Kobe/Pau. And the Celtics always had that three-headed monster. It’s interesting to see how sports repeat themselves culturally.”

And just maybe, according to Bryant, there’s some divine intervention involved.

“You’ve got to believe that the sports gods are up there making things happen somehow,” he said, smiling that it might be true.



bob




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Great read, got a lump in my throat reading this.... Kobe was a real scholar of the game