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On Pro Basketball

Kobe Bryant Ends Career With Exclamation Point, Scoring 60 Points

Kobe Bryant celebrated after scoring 60 points in his final N.B.A. game at Staples Center in Los Angeles on Wednesday.Credit...Harry How/Getty Images

LOS ANGELES — There would be a celebration for Kobe Bryant on Wednesday. Everybody knew that much. The signs were everywhere. Look outside: a block party. Look courtside: gift bags for all. Look up: purple and yellow balloons suspended from the rafters of Staples Center.

Before the Lakers had ever won a title in Los Angeles, they bunched balloons atop the Forum for Game 7 of the finals with the Boston Celtics in 1969, anticipating a party that never came. That day ended in despair and embarrassment. Once upon a time, the Lakers could never win the big one.

Now, they rarely win at all. This was the worst season in the history of their proud franchise. But for 20 years here, Bryant was a callback to the glory days. He helped hang five banners high on the wall of Staples Center. Those banners were the backdrop on Wednesday for the final point of his career: a free throw for his 60th of the night, a number no one else reached in the N.B.A. this season.

So when the balloons fell and the corner cannons blasted confetti, the celebration was more than a salute for past greatness. The Lakers’ 101-96 victory over the Utah Jazz became an outpouring of joy for a singular sensation, for the rare and chilling moment when a once-great athlete digs deep for that old magic, and finds it.

“The coolest thing is that my kids actually saw me play like I used to play,” Bryant said. “It was like, ‘Whoa, Dad!’ I said, ‘Yeah, I used to do that.’ They were like, ‘Really?’ I was like, ‘Dude, YouTube it.’ ”

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Bryant went up for a shot against Jeff Withey of the Jazz in the fourth quarter on Wednesday.Credit...Harry How/Getty Images

This was history unfolding in real time. Bryant, the third-leading scorer in N.B.A. history, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone, had his first 60-point game since one in 2009 at Madison Square Garden against the Knicks. He played 1,346 regular-season games, and this was just his sixth with 60 points.

Jack Nicholson loved it. So did Jay Z and Snoop Dogg, Kanye West and Adam Levine, Frank Robinson and Dave Winfield. They were all there, and dozens of scoreboard tributes played above Bryant’s head all game long. Magic Johnson, Bryant’s childhood hero, told the crowd that Bryant was the greatest Laker ever.

Bryant had arrived in the locker room around 5:15 p.m., wearing a black suit, a black dress shirt and a black tie, his Black Mamba persona apparently still in play. (The last words he would say to the crowd, hours later, were, “Mamba out!”)

But there was no playoff berth at stake for the Lakers, who finished 17-65, and not even a spoiler role to play. The Jazz had been eliminated from the playoff race. This was all about Bryant, right down to the odd prices at the souvenir stands that had his jersey numbers: $38.24 for a T-shirt, $424.80 for a jersey, and so on.

“It’s surreal,” Bryant said. “It’s almost like you’re in a fog. Everything is moving extremely slow but extremely fast. You’re trying to take it all in. You’re not quite sure where to look.”

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Bryant Speaks After Last N.B.A. Game

The Los Angeles Lakers forward spoke on Wednesday after scoring 60 points in the final game of his N.B.A. career, a 101-96 Lakers' victory over the Utah Jazz.

+++VIDEO HITS AS INCOMING+++ 1. 00:00 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Former Los Angeles Lakers Guard: “The perfect ending would have been a championship. You know, that’s the perfect ending to me. Tonight was trying to go out playing hard and trying to put on a show as much as I possibly could and it felt good to be able to do that one last time.” 2. 00:22 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Former Los Angeles Lakers Guard: “Honestly I still, I can’t believe it actually happened to be honest with you, like I don’t, this is, it’s kind of crazy to me. Like I still don’t, it’s hard to believe that it happened this way - it really is. I’m still in shock about it and, just, you know, the outpouring of support all night long and my former teammates and fans and family, it was just, you know, unbelievable. Unbelievable. I’m still in shock about it and I think now I’ll allow myself to go back and read a lot of things and watch some of the commentary, the videos and take it all in, you know?” 3. 01:05 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Former Los Angeles Lakers Guard, on what he was thinking as he walked off: ”‘Don’t trip.’ You know, I mean, it was just, surreal. It’s hard to describe. It’s almost like you’re in a fog and everything is moving extremely slow, yet extremely fast and I’m trying to look and take it all in and trying to observe, I’m not quite sure where to look and just trying to take it alll in and it’s very difficult to do but I - it was just like a dream, just a dream.” 4. 01:48 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Former Los Angeles Lakers Guard, on if he was happy he still had a game like this in him: “Absolutely, absolutely. The coolest thing is that my kids actually saw me play like I used to play. You know what I mean? It was like, ‘Woah, dad!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I used to do this pretty often.’ They were like, ‘Really?’ ‘Like, dude, Youtube it.’ You know what I mean? It was pretty cool for them to actually see that.” 5. 02:17 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Former Los Angeles Lakers Guard: “My teammates were just continuing to encourage me, continuing to say ‘Shoot, shoot, shoot!’ It’s like reverse, you know? It’s a weird year. You know what I mean? Like you go from being the villain to now being some type of a hero and then go from everybody saying pass the ball to shoot the ball - it’s like really strange. But I enjoyed it, they were very encouraging and continuing to feed me and set picks for me and stuff and just felt like a sense of responsibility to continue to play. I mean, there were times when I drove to the basket dude where my legs were just like, ‘What are you, nuts?’ and I just throw the ball up and it goes in, I was like, ‘oh, thank God!’” 7. 03:35 SOUNDBITE (English): Kobe Bryant, Forme r Los Angeles Lakers Guard: “I mean, now with like Twitter and Instagram and all those types of stuff you might catch a glimpse of me shooting at a gym or a playground or something like that, I mean, that’s about it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel great. I feel, I’m extremely happy, I mean this is a very joyful day. To be able to have this experience and have this moment but I will never play an NBA game again. A lot of people say, ‘Yeah, never say never.’ Never.”

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The Los Angeles Lakers forward spoke on Wednesday after scoring 60 points in the final game of his N.B.A. career, a 101-96 Lakers' victory over the Utah Jazz.CreditCredit...Gary A. Vasquez/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

He looked where he always has: the basket. Bryant played to type, like a man with so many more points to score and so little time to do it. His final performance would not be a dud, the way so many are. Michael Jordan scored 15 points in his final game as a Washington Wizard. Charles Barkley scored 2 as a Houston Rocket. Shaquille O’Neal — Bryant’s onetime teammate and foil, who hugged him courtside as the last seconds ticked away — scored none as a Celtic.

To score his 60, Bryant made 22 of 50 shots, including 6 of 21 from 3-point range and 10 of 12 from the foul line. Before Wednesday, no player in at least three decades had taken 50 shots in a game. Even when he scored 81 points, in 2006, Bryant needed only 46 shots from the field. This game was like something from the days of Wilt Chamberlain, who took 63 shots in his 100-point game in 1962.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Lakers coach, Byron Scott, had greeted Bryant with a hug. “We were able to get through it,” he said, to make it to the final game without a debilitating injury. The game plan, Scott said, was simple.

“Try to get him as many shots as I think he can handle,” he said.

It looked painful, at the start. Bryant’s first shot was well short. His second was long. His third attempt was a clanging, off-balance layup miss. Then Bryant lost his dribble in the lane. He might as well have been Willie Mays stumbling in the outfield.

But Bryant’s sixth shot fell in. So did his next four. By then the crowd was standing and roaring, squealing his first name, chanting “M.V.P.!” for the player he used to be. They had seen it all with Bryant, the only player to have spent 20 seasons with one team.

“He’s a Philly guy, and he basically adopted this place,” said Parry Havelaar, a fan from Huntington Beach, Calif., and a season-ticket holder since 1989. “He goes to Angels games, and he’s nuts about Disneyland. He does a lot for the homeless; he and his wife have a charity walk. He’s an L.A. guy.”

Bryant’s teammates spoke of him on Wednesday with reverence. Asked about Bryant’s legacy, Metta World Peace emphasized that basketball was “just a small piece” of it, without elaborating much. Roy Hibbert presented Bryant as some form of supreme being.

“Kobe transcends reality — he transcends dimensions, all realms of life, past and present,” Hibbert said, laughing at the absurdity of it all. “He’s one of a kind. He is what we strive to be, on and off the court. The talent, competitiveness, the drive, the fuel, the energy, everything.”

Bryant, of course, has a more complicated history. He was charged with sexual assault in 2003, though the charges were later dropped, and he settled a related lawsuit. His feud with O’Neal short-circuited a dynasty that won three championships to start the 2000s. He is adored in Los Angeles and respected everywhere. But being hated motivated him, especially in his early years.

“It was extremely necessary for me, because that’s what I fed off,” Bryant said. “At the time, to be embraced, it would have been kryptonite, because the darkness, those dark emotions are what I used to drive me. That isolation, that’s what I grew up on.”

There was no isolation at Bryant’s going-away party on Wednesday. There was love, lots of it, for the past and for the present, for one final flourish, for one more breathtaking show.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section B, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Bryant Turns Back the Clock, Then Exits. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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