A great player just retired, doing so after finishing a miserable season for his personal success, battling injuries and plodding through a season where his performance dropped to an almost unrecognizable level. That player did finish it all off in style, in just the way he would have wanted.
Yes, the preceding paragraph is about Kobe Bryant, but in a way it also perfectly describes the final season of Peyton Manning's career. Of course, there are two huge differences. First, Peyton didn't ask for this, he didn't ask for the league-wide, if not global, admiration during an 82-game (or for his sake, 16-game) slog. Second, Peyton's 'success' was winning the one thing he needed to win to complete his brilliant career: a 2nd Super Bowl Ring. For Kobe, it was putting on one last display.
That isn't a round-about way to say Kobe doesn't care about winning, or was too focused on himself. For sure, Kobe Bryant was singularly driven by winning more than most players during the prime of his career. The difference is Kobe wanted to win because Kobe led his team to win. Kobe wanted to be the star, the central figure. He entered a league where a 6'6" shooting guard become a global superstar. He wanted to carry that forward, and he did until the last day.
Both players accomplished memorable feats in their last games, with Peyton winning that ring and Kobe dropping 60, and both games can easily be discredited by their haters. Peyton-haters will point to his bad game, or his overall lack of production and value in this Super Bowl year. For Kobe-haters, they will point to the farcical nature of the refs swallowing whistles on countless moving screens and Kobe throwing up 50 shots - the most since 1980 in any game - to get to 60. Still, both players left with incredible memories for their fans, and that matters even more.
Somewhere between Kobe's achilles tear in 2013 and now, the NBA landscape changed dramatically. The Warriors rose up and become a dominant force playing a new age of basketball so different from the one Kobe dominated. Kobe Bryant's prime came when the league was transforming from isolation-heavy basketball to ball-movement and spacing. His prime was at a point where both were equally effective. Now, there is only one truly effective method and it isn't the one that made Kobe great.
Still, it was fun to see Kobe do that one last time. His prime was at a level that turned his games into spectacles. He hit 50 five striaght times, he had a 60 point game where he sat in the 4th quarter. He had 81 a few weeks later. Kobe was doing things at an individual level that were so outrageous it was hard to not be completely polarized by what was going on.
Kobe himself was always slightly aloof, not caring to be loved to the same degree as a LeBron, but also not so indifferent to public perception as Michael - who ironically was loved anyway. Kobe just wanted to be 'the star.' He loved winning, but he loved winning when personally scoring and leading more. He was driven to match MJ's 6 rings, but driven more to win as many as he could with him being 'the man'. Kobe Bryant was never loved or appreciated as much as he would have liked, but I think he was also treasured more than people will remember.
Had he never came back from the achilles injury, Kobe's career is probably seen to be greater than it is now after suffering three seasons of injury and poor play on an increasingly decrepit Lakers' team. Instead, he did; Kobe never being one to go away without putting up one last fight. Yet seeing him shallow and plodding for a bad team exposed his worst qualities and obstructed his best. His rare 30-point outbursts on a bad team at 35 weren't as fun as when he did hte same thing on an equally bad team at 27. Kobe Bryant, in many ways, just outlasted his usefulness as a star basketball player.
At the end of the day, Kobe in his 60-point performance, managed to upstage the Warriors breaking one of MJ's records. Kobe was able to hold court one last time. Was able to show up and be amazing one last time. Kobe was able to be the center of the NBA world, and for a guy that had won his five rings, won two as the leading star, that seems to be all he wanted. And maybe that isn't the worst thing.
