Line of the Night

22 points. 8 assists. 4 rebounds. 3 steals. Kobe Bryant.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

I used to think I had this game figured out. But LeBron has gone and muddled my idea of what a basketball player is supposed to do. Even now, 19 hours later, I’m still not in a position to process fully the significance of last night’s performance. Honestly, at this point, any cogent articulation of LeBron’s signature game, at least on my end, could very well take years, even decades, to spit out. You would think Kobe’s 61 points would have prepared me, but the King’s immediate answer has left me at a complete loss. All I can say is, while Kobe’s offensive output brings to mind, as I replay it in my head, the cold, beautiful efficiency of the Baltimore Catechism, LeBron’s 52-point triple-double—the first in 25 years!—makes me think of the weighty grandeur of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem.

Or this scene from Vision Quest.



Either is appropriate. Really.

I guess what I’m fumbling at is the idea that Kobe’s game made me stand up and take notice-- even if his 61 points came at the expense of my Knickerbockers—but LeBron’s magnificent game against the Knicks, 48 hours later, made me rethink my prefabricated notion of what it means to believe in the King and the National Basketball Association.

61

Let's put Kobe's 61-point game into perspective. Normally, in a situation like this, fans might point out that the opposing team (re: my Knickerbockers) should have defended Kobe a little more aggressively. While I will agree that Mike D'Antoni could have thrown a few more double-teams Kobe's way, there was simply no way of stopping him last night: Kobe was on a mission from God. 

Speaketh Kobe:

Coming up the elevator, I was thinking about all the great players who had played here. I was thinking about Willis Reed and Jerry West and all of the great rivalries they had. It makes it very special.

Al Harrington, who took a few turns trying to guard Kobe last night, had this to say about Kobe's mindset before the opening tip:

Usually I go up to him and he has something funny to say, but he was all business tonight. I knew we were going to be in for a long one.

You can say that again. Kobe shot an incredible 19-for-31 (61 percent) from the field and a perfect 20-for-20 from the free-throw line. Only three other players in the last two decades have hit 20 or more consecutive free throws in one game-- Rip Hamilton (20/20), Amar'e Stoudemire (20/20) and Dominique Wilkins (23/23). Amazing. Kobe's cold-blooded efficiency was not to be denied.  At one point in the first half, D'Antoni told his shell-shocked team that Kobe should come back down to earth at some point in the night, but "if he keeps hitting these shots, we'll just have to go home." Really, what else can you do? 

After the game, D'Antoni elaborated on his defensive strategy: 

We didn’t really want to double all the time, because he will find other guys. We tried to do the rope-a-dope a little bit, where he might have shot himself out, but he didn’t.

Again, I'm not blaming D'Antoni or poor Wilson Chandler, who had the misfortune of guarding Kobe most of the night. Kobe hit everything, even tightly contested shots, as evidenced in the picture above. It's not like Kobe doesn't have a 60-point game in him. Last night was Kobe's 17th time scoring at least 50 points, and his fifth with at least 60. Jesus. Mary. And Joseph. 

Kobe's 61-point ridiculousness was the most points ever scored in a game at the Garden, besting Jamal Crawford's 52, Michael Jordan's 55, Richie Guerin's 57 and, ultimately, Bernard King's 60, the previous Garden record. (King also once scored 52 points and, later, 55 points at the Garden).

Great players, by definition, do great things. Kobe just happened to save his greatest game of the year for his only visit to the Garden-- and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could have done to stop him. 

UPDATE: NBAMate has a recap of all of Kobe's 24 regular season outbursts of 50 points or more. Check it out.  

Line of the Night

61 points. 3 assists. 1 block. Kobe Bryant. 

Witness, Again

FreeDarko weighs in on the significance of LeBron's Friday night magnificence against the Celtics, in relation to Kobe's equally impressive--yet entirely different-- Friday night gem against the Pacers.

One thing's for certain: As of right now, LeBron's play casts Kobe in an entirely new light. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Kobe is mortal. He pushes himself, not the laws of what's possible. His vocabulary is all that basketball has to offer, not the possibility of total transcendence and reinvention of those parameters. Don't get me wrong, the Lakers' finest remains larger-than-life, but it's not the same as LeBron's ability to make us rethink what might happen on the court.

I touched on this briefly here, in Saturday's edition of "Line of the Night," although not nearly as deeply. My comment was basically this: Kobe good; LeBron REALLY good. 

The point remains, however, that LeBron can, at this point in his young career, do things on the court that Kobe could never do. Does that make him a better basketball player? I don't know. I think it just means that LeBron is much more fun to watch.   

The rest is just details. 

Line of the Night

40 points. 7 rebounds. 4 assists. 2 steals. 1 block. Kobe Bryant. 

Line of the Night

36 points. 4 rebounds. 3 assists. 2 steals. Kobe Bryant.