Everyone knew it was inevitable, Kobe Bryant is retiring at the season’s end, but how much are fans appreciating it?
The old saying goes “all good things must come to an end,” and Kobe Bean Bryant’s basketball career is no different.
As the fans will all say goodbye to one of the greatest basketball players on this planet, let’s not forget what Bryant has blessed NBA fans with for so many years.
A five-time NBA Champion, two-time Finals MVP, 2008 NBA MVP, two-time NBA scoring champion, 17-time NBA All-Star selection and 15-time All-NBA selection are some of the many prestigious honors that Bryant has accumulated over his 20-year career.
While facing so many injuries over the last two-plus seasons, many Kobe-haters and fans alike have been calling for the seasoned veteran to call it quits.
For the haters, it seemed they would have liked to see him retire just for the fact they can’t stand a winner.
Most people would say it’s because he’s a selfish player, but Bryant is the only person in the NBA history to score 30,000 points and dish out 6,000 assists.
The next argument may be he’s only an offensive player and he doesn’t give his all on the defensive end.
Bryant has been named to the NBA All-Defensive team 12 times.
As for the Mamba maniacs around the world, they felt as if Bryant should hang up his sneakers in order to save a career that could possibly be tarnished if play is resumed.
Furthermore, it may be likely that Bryant is the second best player of all-time behind Michael Jordan.
With Father Time being undefeated throughout history it seems as if old age has finally caught up with Bryant.
That is no surprise as he has tallied well over 45,000 minutes of basketball during his reign amongst the NBA elites.
Although, before he got to this point he set some pretty big records before reaching the age of 20.
He often jokes about how he needed the signatures of his parents in order to verify his first NBA contract.
11 days later, Bryant would become the youngest player to win the Slam Dunk Contest only to follow that up exactly one year later to be the youngest player to start an NBA All-Star Game.
Despite the fear of a mortal Kobe Bryant career becoming a fact sooner rather than later, let’s enjoy the ride as long as we can.
