CHAPTER FOURTEEN 2005-2006
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Kobe Bryant worked out throughout the off season to improve his speed and agility. When he returned to the court at the start of the 2005-2006 season, it was obvious to everyone that his efforts had paid off. He scored 20 or more points in six of the eight preseason games, and then exploded in the first regular season games, posting nine games with 30 or more points, including two with more than 40! And on December 20, he was nearly unstoppable as he made shot after shot for 62 points, his best ever game.
But even Kobe couldn’t have anticipated what would happen on January 22, 2006. That night, the Lakers faced the Toronto Raptors in Los Angeles. Two minutes into the game, Bryant made a reverse layup for two points. Thirty seconds later, he added two more on a fadeaway. He didn’t score again for four minutes, but by the end of the first period he had earned 14 points, four of which came from free throws. Good numbers, but not unusual for him and not enough to help the Lakers overcome the Raptor’s seven-point lead.
By halftime, he had a total of 26 points and seemed on his way to yet another 40-or-more point game. Then came the second half.
After missing two jump shots in the opening minutes, Bryant hit eight in a row, including three three pointers! He added another point with a free throw to bring his game total to 44—and then proceeded to sink virtually ever shot in the remainder of the game. When the dust finally settled, Bryant had made a grand total of 81 points!
“Not even in my dreams,” Kobe said of his amazing achievement. “This was something that just happened. It is tough to explain. It is just one of those things.”
That total of 81 points included 7 three pointers and was second only to the individual all-time high score of 100, made by Wilt Chamberlain in 1962. Not surprisingly, the Lakers took the game, 122 to 104.
They took enough additional games in the remainder of the season to push them into the playoffs, too. Kobe had several more 40-plus point games and two 50-plus games during the final months.
Then came the first round of the playoffs, against the Phoenix Suns. The Lakers dropped the opening game, 107 to 102, then took the next three to go ahead three games to one. The most remarkable play during those games came from Kobe Bryant in the final seconds of the third game.
The Lakers were behind by two points. With the shot clock at 0.4, teammate Smush Parker got the ball. He passed it to Bryant. With seven-tenths of a second left, Bryant drove to the hoop and laid the ball up.
Swish!
The ball dropped, the buzzer sounded, and the game was tied! Overtime!
“It was the most fun shot I’ve ever hit,” Bryant later commented.
And it wasn’t the last game-saver he made that night. As the overtime wound down into the final seconds, Los Angeles trailed Phoenix by one. When the Suns’ Steve Nash got possession of the ball, the game seemed over. Then, incredibly, Laker Luke Walton stole the ball!
Once again, Kobe Bryant was the go-to man. As the clock ticked down to the final second, he tossed up a jumper from seventeen feet away. It hit! The Lakers won, 99-98.
Los Angeles was up three games to one in a series marked by its rough-and-tumble play. They needed only one more to eliminate the Suns. They didn’t get it.
Instead, Phoenix annihilated them, winning-the final three games—the last by a margin of 31 points! Kobe delivered a disappointing performance that outing, adding only a single point in the second half and shooting only three times.
“They stepped up to the challenge and kept coming at us in waves,” he said after the elimination. “We just didn’t have enough in the tank to hold on.”
Still, Kobe had much to celebrate at the end of his tenth NBA season. He had his best-ever points-per game average, with 35.4, making him the league leader in that category. He had six 50-or-better point games, including his amazing 81-point game. Thanks to “the Shot"—the overtime buzzer-beater that handed the Lakers the win in Game Four of the 2006 playoffs—he had a place in basketball film history.
As gratifying as such moments were, however, they meant nothing to Bryant unless they factored into the greatest moment of all: victory in the NBA Finals. That was a moment that had eluded Kobe since 2002. It was one he wanted to relive again—soon.
But would the 2006-2007 season give him what he longed for, or would it end in disappointment as the previous four had?