Back then, Kobe Bryant called it a dream, an impossible reality that one man in one game could score 81 points.
“That was something that just happened. It’s tough to explain. It’s just one of those things,” he said in 2006. “To sit here and say I grasp what happened, that would be lying.”
Today, Bryant calls it a blur, a foggy occurrence of events that enabled him to be that man in that one game to score 81 points.
“I didn’t really understand or was able to grasp what happened,” Bryant said recently of the night at Staples Center 10 years ago Friday. “It was very bizarre.”
Bizarre is one way to describe Bryant’s high-scoring affair against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 22, 2006. Others have called it magical, unbelievable and definitely unforgettable. Bryant, then 27 years old, put on a scoring display that will remain one of the greatest basketball achievements in history.
The Lakers’ star guard scored 81 points – the second-highest total in NBA history – in a 122-104 victory in front of a sold-out hometown crowd.
“It means that anything is possible,” Bryant said. “Playing the game as a kid, you have a dream and even if the dreams are extremely wild and imaginative, you work hard. You believe certain nights like that can happen.”
The game began like so many games in Bryant’s long-running NBA career. The Lakers stumbled early, trailing the Raptors by 18 points in the third quarter. An irritated Bryant, the one who would furiously chew his jersey, then took over.
Fueled by the pepperoni pizza and grape soda he consumed the night before, Bryant scored 51 of his 55 second-half points on a wide array of dunks, layups and jumpers. Overall, Bryant went 28 of 46 from the field, including 7 of 13 from 3-point range, and made 18 of 20 free throws on a gimpy right knee.
“I had to play it over in my mind several times, there’s really no explanation for it,” Bryant said. “I can always explain it from an X’s and O’s standpoint, from a training standpoint, but when nights like that happen … there’s always something mystical about it, scoring that many points, that really carries no explanation.”
Chris Bosh, who played for the Raptors for seven seasons, was keeping track of Bryant’s baskets during the game.
“He only had 26 (points) at the half. A lot of people don’t know that,” Bosh said last month on the Dan Patrick Show. “He had 55 in the second half. He had some incredible shots in the game.”
Bryant said in an interview last week with NBATV that the night didn’t feel special. There was nothing different, he said, except the outcome.
“I remember my knee was very sore,” he said. “I had a hard time exploding off of it, but we needed the win. So once we started the game I started seeing lanes open up and thought I could take advantage of them. The rotations were pretty slow that night, so I thought if I could continue to get to these spots, it could be a pretty big night.”
Bryant said he wasn’t fully aware of his points, but teammate Lamar Odom kept egging him on to score.
“I remember Lamar coming up to me in timeouts during the third, saying you can’t get 60. You can’t get 70. Get 80,” Bryant said, chuckling at the memory. “Every time he did that it, it snapped me out of my zone a little bit.”
Odom, who played for the Lakers for seven seasons, said Bryant was “close to God” after his 40-point half two weeks earlier. After the 81-point game, Odom said, “Can’t stop God’s will.”
No one could stop Bryant that night as the Raptors tried almost everything in their defensive arsenal to no avail. John Ireland, then a sideline reporter for KCAL/9, said one thing the Raptors didn’t try was double-teaming Bryant.
“For whatever reason, Toronto didn’t double him. They kept changing the defender, but never took the ball out of his hands,” Ireland said. “That allowed him to either shoot or get fouled on almost every possession.
“Inside the building, we all thought, ‘He might get 60, maybe 70.’ Nobody was thinking 80, but they kept fouling, and he kept climbing.”
Bryant eventually left the game with 4.2 seconds left and immediately went into the history books. Only Wilt Chamberlain’s storied 100-point game in 1962 ranks higher.
Even Bryant’s idol, Michael Jordan, never scored more than 69 in a game.
“He’s the greatest player of my generation,” Bosh said. “He was that guy after Mike (Jordan) that really just won. He was about winning championships. He did it at a young age. It was amazing for him to climb up so high, so fast.”
Former Raptors guard Jalen Rose, who guarded Bryant in that game, said in a 2012 Grantland video that Toronto coach Sam Mitchell switched from a zone defense to man-to-man in the second half.
“He erupted for like 40 or something in the third quarter,” Rose said. “How does that happen? He was dominant over us. He was putting the smack down on us, he really did. … He wasn’t saying a word.”
Bryant was in a zone, but that didn’t faze then-Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who wanted to take him out of the game after the third quarter, according to longtime trainer Gary Vitti.
“I remember (assistant coach) Frank Hamblen said, ‘I don’t think you can,’ because he was on such a roll,’” Vitti said. “It was surreal. It was like, ‘This is historic. What is going to happen next? How far are we going to go with this?’”
Rose and his Raptors teammates beat themselves up after the game, saying “‘We’re idiots. How did we let that happen? Why didn’t we clothesline that guy?’
“But you know what? All that is a tribute to the respect we have for Kobe. … When you go up against a guy like that, there are going to be historic nights. And it’s not like Luke Walton scored 20 on me. If that had happened, I would have buried my head.”
Bryant said the game will serve as a lesson for future players, allowing them to dream the impossible.
“You don’t want to place a ceiling on a performance, what you can or can’t do. Just go out there and play,” Bryant said. “And dream. I think nights like that are completely possible. Believe that it is possible.”
Contact the writer: jcarr@ocregister.com
