Bryant’s Lakers, Legacy, Stumble in Finals

"It's not about how hard you push along the way. It's about having something left in you to finish."
— Michael Jordan

It often seems with Kobe Bryant that he models his career with WWJD in mind. What Would Jordan Do? Even his jersey switch to No. 24 could be implied as an attempt to be seen as one better than the greatest ever to lace 'em up.

If Kobe Bryant was going to stake his claim as the greatest of all ballers, he needed to win the 2008 NBA Finals. Perhaps not only that, he needed to do something legendary and treat Boston's TD Banknorth Garden the way Jordan treated the Delta Center in Utah. In short, Kobe needed an epic clutch performance against a respectable opponent, and quite possibly in their building during a Game 6 or 7.

He finally had the setup he wanted. The star of the team that as he had said "instilled his DNA into the team," (no this did not happen during their first round playoff series in Denver, Colorado, although they did win both of those road games), getting them to play at a high level around him, make crisp passes and create a new chapter of the Showtime Lakers. Having conquered the mighty and defensively sound Spurs in a mere five games, things seemed to be right on track.

Yes, Boston is a great and tenacious defensive team, but are they really that much better at stopping the ball than the Spurs? Kobe seemed to think so. Unlimited competitive toughness and killer instinct notwithstanding, Kobe Bryant did not raise his game to the challenge in the Finals. Instead, he got cut down to size by the leprechauns.

This is not to say he did not have M.J.-like moments in these Finals. Yet without the performance and without the required four wins, those moments become significantly less relevant. With the Lakers trailing two games to none, Kobe did deliver a quality performance in Game 3 at Staples. He scored 36 points, his most in any game of the series, including two jumpers in the final 1:06 to salt the game away and get the Lakers back in the series.

Kobe was not as dominant in Game 5. Starting strong, Bryant scored 15 points in the game's first 8:25 while his team enjoyed an early 19-point lead, then disappeared entirely, not scoring again until the third quarter. This showed as his team went scoreless for nearly seven minutes straight in the second. This was all reconciled by Kobe's heroics in the game's final minute, however.

While Paul Pierce had clearly gotten the better of Kobe on this night, with 38 points, Bryant got the last laugh with the game on the line. As Pierce carried the ball up the court with a chance to tie, Bryant pounced at the right moment, and in a lightning-quick swipe, Kobe reached in between Pierce's arm and body to get only ball, knocking it loose and racing downcourt, where he took the outlet pass from Lamar Odom and turned it in to the game-clinching slam. All this while staring down Finals elimination. Jordan-esque? Absolutely.

Those moments could have been great for his legacy had he come through in any of the other games of the series. In fact, rumor has it that for the three games in Boston, Kobe never actually made it to the arena. While he had performed sublime, superhuman performances throughout the playoffs, regardless of home or road, the men in green served as kryptonite.

Effectively stymied in Game 1 and most of Game 2 in Boston, Kobe led the Lakers on a too-little-too-late charge, just falling short of a series-tying comeback. Kobe scored 24 of his team's 88 in Game 1 and 30 of 102 in Game 2.

His counterpart, Paul Pierce, meanwhile, enjoyed a pantheon moment recovering from a knee injury, walking back onto the court and draining two backbreaking three-pointers in Game 1. While many will forever question the authenticity of the injury, and rightfully so, the fact remains it was still gutsier and more productive than anything Kobe could muster in the series.

In Game 4, Kobe seemed lost. This seemed to be a side-note the way the Lakers offense kicked into gear for two and a half quarters. They were crushing the Celtics without him before the Celtics famously came back from down 24 points on the road. This included one stretch in which the Lakers saw a 20-point lead cut to 2 in just 5:49 of game time, thanks to a Celtics 21-3 run. While Kobe did score 10 points in the final quarter, it would again be a futile attempt as the Celtics won by 6. Again it begs the question: would a Michael Jordan-led team have allowed a loss this humiliating to occur?

Finally, the humiliation factor in Game 6 was amplified greatly even from there. Yes, winning playoff games in Boston is tough for any opponent, but the Lakers lost Game 6 by 39 points and were just about never in it after the first quarter. For the second straight game, Kobe was red-hot in the first quarter and quieter than a kitten for much of the game thereafter, totaling only 22 for the game and losing the title by a gargantuan 131-92 score.

Not only that, the Lakers failed to show a basic sportsman's effort that Tuesday night. With seven minutes left in the second quarter, the Lakers only trailed by 3. From that point, the Celtics ran away with matters, in part because the disheartened Lakers flat-out gave up on the defensive end. The Celtics converted on 13-of-26 three-pointers in Game 6, including a ridiculous 7-of-9 from three for the formerly slumping Ray Allen. Many of these looks were wide open and the result of a team in purple and gold putting up the white flag. The 131-92 Celtics win transcended mere butt-kickings. This was a three-hour blow-torch session to the collective derriere of Lakers pride.

Kobe may have become what Ray Allen had been in the first two rounds of the playoffs: a shadow of his former self who had thrown up enough bricks in the series to rebuild the old Boston Garden. It is not the first time this has happened, either. In the '04 Finals against Detroit, Kobe had taken much of the scoring responsibilities from the aging Shaq. While he had a memorable three-pointer to force overtime in their only win in Game 2, Bryant was completely stymied otherwise during a serious Detroit beat-down in five games. In 2006, Kobe seemed to have put away the Suns with otherworldly heroics in Game 4, forcing overtime at the buzzer and then winning it in overtime at the buzzer to gain a 3-1 series lead. This only led to Kobe's Lakers dropping the next three straight, culminating in a Game 7 in which Bryant only scored one second half point on 0-of-3 shooting.

This all leads us to Shaq's entertaining appearance in a Manhattan nightclub just a few nights ago in which he took the mic and tried to pick up his fallen rap career with a slam on his estranged former teammate. Shaq said, "Tell me how I be/Last week Kobe couldn't do without me." While far from a classy move by Shaq, it goes to show Kobe not only fell short of his idol, he also failed to silence his most notorious critic.

In basketball math, that means 23 is still greater than (and not equal to) 24.