Nothing in life truly prepares you for the end. Yet, for the late Kobe Bryant, who played the last game of his 20-year NBA career a decade ago tonight, perhaps the end of his playing days wasn’t just an epic coronation. Perhaps they were a fulfilled pledge to himself.

Long before his 60-point swan song. Long before the Oscar-winning post-basketball life Bryant transitioned into as gracefully as we’d seen an athlete. Long before “Mamba Mentality” became an internationally recognized brand, there was young Kobe. He was competitive and wise beyond his years. Because of that, the transition into the league was complex and, at times, an enraging process.

Shortly after the Los Angeles Lakers’ 1997 postseason ended — infamously after a rookie Bryant airballed four shots at the end of the game — the budding star spoke of the mentality that would become his career’s ethos.

“Those are things that can easily break you or they help you grow stronger,” Bryant said. “I’m not the type that’s gon’ break easily.”

Two years later, before the start of the 1999 playoffs, Doc Rivers — who would later coach the Boston Celtics against Bryant’s Lakers in the 2008 and 2010 NBA Finals — asked Bryant how he wanted his career to be remembered after he retired. 

“I just want God to say, ‘Man, that guy could play.'”

Not all promises are meant to be broken.

On April 13, 2016, Jim Poorten was going to witness history either way. But he still had a hell of a decision to make.

Poorten, the NBA’s director of social content (and a league photographer since 2018), could either go to Oakland and see the Golden State Warriors notch their record-breaking 73rd win of the season, or to Los Angeles to see Bryant’s last game up close and personal.

Advantage Kobe. 

“Getting [to Staples Center] earlier in the afternoon, you knew something special was happening,” Poorten told Andscape. “That wasn’t a commonplace thing — for all of L.A. Live to be just about Kobe.”

The energy inside the arena was nearly suffocating. Everyone in the building wanted the same thing. This was it. There was no playoff run for the Lakers. And there was no next game. Not with Bryant at the helm, at least.

The matchup itself was a fight. Kobe dropped 22 points in the first half on 7-of-20 shooting from the field against the Utah Jazz. His jumpers mostly felt flat. His legs looked every bit of a man who had given everything to basketball over three decades.

Still, it was magic.

Storybook moments feel like that because they rarely happen. NBA history is littered with all-time greats sputtering across the finish line at the end of their careers. But everyone wanted to see Kobe Bryant end his career the way he had always approached it.

They wanted Kobe Bryant to bend the rules of reality one last time.

In the final frame, it happened. Fourth-quarter Kobe showed up one more time for the road. Floaters were falling. Jumpers were falling. Free throws were falling. This wasn’t just a game anymore. For Bryant, it was a resolution piecing itself together on the world’s stage.

After flaming out in his first playoff stint as a rookie, Bryant saying failure wouldn’t break him wasn’t just a sexy soundbite. It was an act of survival. Technically a man by then, the NBA still viewed him as a kid. He sat behind grown men on the bench and he played in front of grown men on the court — many of whom eagerly wanted to see if Bryant was capable of being humbled.

Allen Iverson, NBA Hall of Famer and Bryant’s equally famous fellow 1996 draftee, once told the story of Bryant’s obsessive mentality. Iverson was in LA during their rookie year and Bryant came to pick him up. After grabbing food, the young Laker asked Iverson about his plans for the night.

“I said, ‘I’m going to the club.’ I mean, we in LA! I’m going to the club, Kobe. C’mon, man,'” Iverson reflected in a 2020 Players’ Tribune essay.

Iverson’s response was quintessential Iverson. Even at 18, so was Bryant’s.

“I’m going back to the gym,” he said. 

Throughout his career, Bryant was painted as stubborn, fiercely internal, and slightly — if not purposefully — isolated. The truth is, he was all of them. Bryant was living in a world most teenagers would crumble in. And he had to do so while trying to find his way on the court, too.

So when Bryant said he “wasn’t gon’ break easily,” it was a message to the league. It was a message to the media. And more importantly, Kobe Bryant’s message was a message to himself.

At some point, your career will end. In a game defined by uncontrollables, obsess over control. Seize control.

“Kobe didn’t care about being cool,” said Julian Kimble, writer and author of a forthcoming book on the cultural impact of the 1996 NBA draft. “It was all about the task and the results.”

Those results didn’t come without their fair share of euphoria and scars. The pageantry of championships came — five times. Iconic Olympic moments and gold medals, too. Twenty-four years later, Bryant’s Lakers squad remains the last American pro sports team to win three consecutive championships. He grew into one of the league’s youngest and brightest stars, playing on one of its glamour teams. Bryant was the closest embodiment of Michael Jordan, but he was also inextricably Kobe Bryant.

The valleys became public fodder, too — personal, public, professional. After he was accused of sexual assault in 2003 in Colorado (an allegation he denied), Bryant felt like Public Enemy No. 1. And when many questioned whether gifted individuals could coexist to help the team succeed, the team’s future appeared murky, too.

But even the complexities and contradictions became part of who Bryant was — and how the world came to remember, shun, embrace again and discuss him.

“There’s his career and how it was seen prior to Eagle, Colorado. Then there’s everything that came after that,” Kimble said. “Had that not happened, we don’t get him positioning himself as the ‘Black Mamba’ or creating the ‘Mamba Mentality.'”

It wasn’t mythology. Every reinvention — every awe-inspiring display of stubborn brilliance — all trickled back down to that original promise: He wouldn’t break.

Not a soul outruns time, though. Time accumulates. Time rusts. Time grinds — on an athlete’s bones and brain. The stingers last longer and those pulled hamstrings never quite fully heal. 

After 20 years in the league, his explosiveness had dulled. Those bouncy knees that won Bryant the 1997 NBA All-Star dunk contest had long exited the building. The last several years of his career couldn’t deny that the theoretical had now become reality. His body broke down in front of us. But his will helped him overcome a torn Achilles and rotator cuff.

That battle introduced an entirely new dynamic. Bryant would get injured. No one could deny that. But could he still finesse the game just enough to control what breaking down actually looked like?

Something fascinating happened in the twilight of Bryant’s career: He became … softer. It wasn’t a weakness, though. He smiled more. The wins and the losses didn’t seem to agonize him as much as they did earlier in his career. In his final season, and certainly leading up to that final game, Kobe Bryant had found the confirmation that drove him.

“I just want God to say, ‘Man, that guy could play.'”

Basketball discourse is a toxic world. Who’s better than whom? Who could play in different eras? None of it really matters. None of it is really indicative of the true value of a legacy. 

Bryant found purpose in resistance — in opponents, injuries, and even self-sabotage. As his late 30s gave way to a new decade of life, Bryant bathed in clarity. About what he did to the game. About the family he cherished for years — the family that made sacrifices so he could be shared with the world.

As he walked into what was then the Staples Center on April 13, 2016, Kobe Bryant was about to receive an answer not even he could control. There was always a crowd around Bryant as he entered the arena. That night, dressed in an all-black suit, it was as if the entire world knew he would shoot every time he touched the ball.

And he did.

The fourth quarter was an embodiment of his quotes. The ball found his hands, then the net. Teammates understood that night had two missions: Get the win for Bryant and make sure he was the reason they won.

Celebrities such as Kendrick Lamar, Shaquille O’Neal, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Jeremy Piven and more basked in awe.

All Jay-Z could say was, “Wow.”

Fans far removed from the artificial world of celebrity — just there to see a part of their lives’ soundtracks one last time — screamed, cheered and cried. It was a revival.

“People want something to believe,” Kimble said of the aura Bryant built around himself. “People want to be evangelized.”

It wasn’t a normal game. What’s understood actually had to be said. There would be no comeback tour. This was it for Kobe Bryant. This was his last fierce rebuttal to basketball’s exit interview. As time dwindled — on the game and Bryant’s career — every possession became its own deliberation. With each point he challenged the spirit of basketball. He wasn’t the bright-eyed rookie or young kid anymore. His body was different. His mind absolutely was. But whatever was left was undeniably his.

The Lakers, of course, won Kobe Bryant’s last game. Shaquille O’Neal asked his former running mate, mutual antagonist and ultimate “little brother” to go for 50.

Kobe, ever the stubborn jerk, decided 60 was more appropriate.

Everyone understood this was history as well as his story.

“You could feel other people’s joy,” Poorten remembered. “That’s a special feeling when you can feel other people’s emotions.”

Then came the speech. The last time he’d do so with a Lakers jersey on his back. His remarks were brief. Honestly, what could he say in the moment the last 20 years hadn’t said already?

Then came the final line — the single most fitting goodbye following the most fitting final game an athlete could hope for, save for a championship.

“Mamba out.”

Say what needs to be said, and let the history books handle eternity. The perfect ending had been achieved.

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