It's hard to compare one game heroics vs a season's work. I would say that this last game kind of adds to Kobe's cult, even though he had a disastrous final two seasons. If you ask me which record will more likely be broken, it has to be Curry's. Perhaps by himself next season. But ain't nobody touching Kobe's final game at age 38 before retirement of 60 points. EVER. It takes a great player, and a player all about himself.
More importantly it takes a franchise willing to let itself turn into a flaming Viking burial ship as tribute.
Somebody put the viking funeral on the twitters last night and it's been memeaphoring around for awhile. I'd LOVE to claim it but I can't. Boo Sutton Hoo.
As some media folks have said...the Lakers are a family business for the Buss family... And their value was to allow for Kobe to have a swan song...Most corporations would go bust after having three seasons of gutter performances...Kobe's aura allowed for the Lakers to milk every last drop of value from him...in order to keep the Lakers relevant. Unless they hit on their imminent #1 overall pick and get a system that allows their current cast of players to thrive, they will find things to be very difficult in the coming years. This was a crazy gamble by a Laker family...
Question: If your average starting 2-guard in the NBA took 50 shots, with teammates setting them up at every opportunity, how many points would they score? I think a number of them could get 60 points. Not all of them, maybe not even most. But quite a few. Harden could get 80 points if he took 50 shots.
It's actually kind of an anti-climax to what could be an epic finale night of a season. The Warriors' record breaking game was against a Grizzlies team that had been reduced to D-League level. Nobody expected the Warriors to lose. Kobe's final game was against a Utah team that just lost out their playoffs hope. And the Lakers had their worst season ever in franchise history. Neither team was playing to win. The Lakers just wanted to stage a good show for Kobe. That said, I give Kobe the credit for actually making shots, which he was able to do about 1 out of 10 games.
If he can still walk, he could score 60 on 50 shots with 12 FT's against all star game quality defense in a game that doesn't matter.
During the regular season / playoffs, wouldn't most teams allow a guy to go off for 60 points on 50 shots if it meant winning the game? Utah lost last night, but for the most part, Kobe was shooting like crap until the last 5 minutes. By that logic alone I'd imagine it would be easy for a guy purposely gunning for solo points to get 50.
