Kobe Bryant Left His Jersey Retirement Game After It Went To Overtime

Kobe Bryant‘s jersey retirement game got off to a late start. It tipped around 7:30 p.m. in Los Angeles, and it was the culmination of what was likely a long day for Bryant. The ceremony itself didn’t end until after 9 p.m. PST, and then the Lakers and Warriors had an entire second half of hoops to play.

So if you’re Kobe Bean Bryant and you have your family with you, there is no way on earth that you want overtime. It’s been an emotionally-charged day where he had to do stuff like sit through a press conference and give a speech to the Staples Center. You cannot blame him if he wants to go to sleep.

That’s especially the case when neither Kevin Durant nor Kentavious Caldwell-Pope could break a 102-102 tie at the end of regulation. Bryant decided to do what anyone who had a full day would do in the same situation: go home.

Bryant said during his pre-ceremony press conference that his routine involves waking up at 5 a.m. to work out, and assuming he wants to get a solid 7-8 hours of sleep before he starts grinding, that means getting to bed by like 10 p.m. He was already past his bedtime under that assumption, and I know that if I was Bryant, I’d have considered packing it in by the time the third quarter ended.

The bad news is that he missed a fun game, one that ended with Durant making up for his previous miss by doing this to Lonzo Ball.

The good news, though, is he got to get a head start on traffic so he could get to bed. Mamba out.