The Time Has Come

“Yesterday, I’m not half the man I used to be.”

John Lennon & Paul McCartney

***********************************************

Kobe Bryant has just announced that he will be retiring from professional basketball at the end of this season. As much as people might like the idea of the name of the basketball player Kobe Bryant continuing on, the reality of his situation is that his body can’t cash the checks anymore that his mind is writing. His mind still thinks he can make that Type A personality drive to the basket for a tomahawking slam dunk, though he is instead a man of 37 that has just had a torn Achilles’ tendon and his body simply won’t allow him to do those incredibly athletic things anymore.

The off balance dribble drives to the basket that used to go in are now clanging off the rim. The pull up 25 foot jumpers for three pointers that used to take your breath away (and often go in) are often now coming up hitting nothing but air (he’s shooting more airballs this season than the rest of his career put together).

As of this writing, he is averaging more shot attempts per game (about 16) than he is points per game (about 15), as a result of his shooting less than 30% from the field. By the way, that’s not less than 30% from three-point range, that’s less than 30% overall, from the field, including layups, dunks and any other easier shots he might take to counter-balance the more difficult outside shots.  A man’s GOT to know his limitations.  Kobe Bryant is MISSING the same shots he used to make.  He is missing shots that, if he passed the ball off to one of his younger teammates, maybe THEY would make their shot attempt.  THAT fact is hurting his team big time.

(the question, though, is if the team’s ownership even wants to win, given that they keep the high lottery draft pick if it’s one of the top three and lose it if it’s anything else).

Furthering the problem, his Lakers team is a mere 2 and 14 on the season. Kobe Bryant has always been about his team winning and his team is NOT winning. Now, he seems to care more about him getting HIS shot attempts off and not in doing what is best for the team.  Him shooting almost any shot attempt used to be what was the best thing for the team.  That is not the case anymore.  Clearly, he is not the man he used to be.

(unless of  course the team ownership WANTS him to gun away and cause them to lose games.  players don’t try to lose, but owners do.  it’s a conspiracy theory worth thinking about).

When Father Time says it’s time for you to quit, what chance does a mere mortal human being have of fighting such a formidable foe? The time for Kobe Bryant to retire has finally come today, even if he still intends to play out this season and earn the remaining megabucks of his hefty 25 million plus per year contract.

Kobe Bryant’s biggest problem of course is the fact that his body is that of a 37-year-old man and it simply has had too much “mileage” put on it. Mileage he created from the intense, high wire act type of game he played, which caused such a great level of wear and tear on his legs and feet from always having to jump higher and work harder to put himself into the many difficult positions he always seemed to be forcing himself to be in. Think about all of the playoff games he played in.

He was the type of player that, upon receiving a pass that would leave him open for an uncontested 20 foot jump shot, he would instead take the pass and dribble into something more difficult, but in his own, unique rhythm, and turn an uncontested 20 footer into a contested, slightly off balance 23 footer (that usually went in). He never did anything that wasn’t athletic. He never did anything the easy way. His rhythm was making the difficult shots seem somehow doable, and the impossible shots that no one else could make would also somehow seem possible when HE tried them.

That was the allure of Kobe Bryant. He did the things that no one else could do and he did them in a way that made you drop your jaw in awe, as the out of this world game of his (no matter whether you liked him or not) made you HAVE to admire the brilliance of the man and his basketball abilities. He may have been a gunner, but he made so damned many of them.

Whether it was Bryant catching a lob pass flung from half court and catching it mid air and reverse slamming home a thunderous dunk to electrify a crowd, or him taking the last shot of a game where they trailed by two and hitting a
closely guarded and off balance three pointer to win a game, he was a one of a kind player.

The man who once scored 61 points in three quarters of a game (and sat out the entire fourth quarter) or scored 81 points in a game now has a hard time scoring 20 in a game. The man who sits at number three amongst the all time leading scorers in NBA history will only add a small amount of total points to his totals and will add a whole heck of a lot more misses to his total “missed” totals.  His mind thinks he can still do it, but his body can NOT do it anymore. He is going to retire at the end of this season, and, when all of the good things he has accomplished gets sorted out, his legendary superstar status will be what he is remembered for.

Unfortunately, great athletic ability does not last forever. But no one can deny the greatness that was once Kobe Bryant. People like him only come around once every ten years or so in basketball. We in the sports world were lucky to have had him.