It’s the end of an era: Kobe Bryant is no longer playing NBA basketball (unless, of course, he decides to change his mind because free time bores him so much he can’t take it). The basketball world exploded over #MambaDay, and Bryant didn’t disappoint, having as Mamba a day as he possibly could by going for 60 points on 50 shots.
Somehow Bryant managed to eclipse history being made just a channel over, with the Warriors winning their record 73rd regular season game this year. It’s an amazing achievement, and it still seemed to play second fiddle to Kobe. He was one of those players, and there aren’t many of those guys left in the league. Will Steph Curry be one of them when his career winds down? Or a youngster like Anthony Davis? Who knows. But even if they are, they won’t be as weird and sociopathic as Kobe, for better or worse.
We bring in SB Nation’s Rodger Sherman to discuss this and plenty more this week, including:
- The how-to on buying game-worn NBA warmups on eBay
- Whether Kobe’s farewell tour was good for the Lakers
- Only in the NBA can a thing like Kobe’s last game happen
- The Warriors being a pretty good basketball team
- How the Warriors are essentially the Buzzfeed headline of basketball teams and we aren’t able to appreciate them in the moment
- The Browns (I don’t know why we talked about the Browns)
- Telling Rodger to go full TMZ with the SB Nation Sports Morning Snapchat account
- Athletes loving Cheesecake Factory
As always, comments and tweets are welcome. Subscribe to us on iTunes, too! You can find Robby at (@rkalland) and Martin at (@martinrickman), and Rodger is at (@rodger_sherman). Football is great and so are friends, but football (and every other sport) is always better with friends.
Special thanks to the band Annabel for our intro and outro music. They’re really good. You should buy their music at their website or perhaps see them play a show some time.
