Another Bitter Pill: Kobe drops 60 against the Jazz

I wrote a blog last fall called "The Bitter Pill: My Worst Sports Memories." In it, I recounted the most terrible things that have ever happened to me, as a life-long sports fan. Last night, on April 13, 2016, it happened again.

A new season and high hopes for the Utah Jazz

I really thought the Utah Jazz were going to make the NBA playoffs this year. We've been in "rebuild mode" for a few years now, but I feel like this group - built around Gordon Hayward, Derrick Favors, Rudy Gobert, Rodney Hood and Alec Burks - is a pretty decent young team. We finished the 2014-15 season on a high note, missing the playoffs, but going on a run down the stretch that had me excited for the 2015 campaign to start up.

Things took a hit before we could even get the train rolling this year, as our supposed "point guard of the future," Dante Exum, suffered a season-ending injury while playing in the off-season in his native Australia. That was just the beginning, really, as 2015 turned out to be an injury plagued year for many of our core players. Alec Burks broke his leg, Rudy Gobert sprained his MCL, Derrick Favors hurt his back... It was not a healthy year for us.

Despite the injuries, we were able to hang in there (thanks in some part to a "down year" in the Western Conference - only Golden State, San Antonio and Oklahoma City stood out as dominant teams) and we were fighting for our postseason lives to the bitter end, so to speak. With only a few games to play, Utah, Dallas and Houston were jockeying for the seventh and eighth playoff spots in the West. With a few games left, all the Jazz needed to do, simply put, was win their games. After a truly unfortunate loss to an almost entirely depleted Los Angeles Clippers team, the Jazz had three games to play and really needed to "win out" in order to make the playoffs. We beat the Nuggets soundly in Denver and approached the most important game of the year: a showdown between the then-sixth-seeded Dallas Mavericks.

I was at the Jazz-Mavericks game in Salt Lake City on Monday. I was pumped. I don't believe Dallas is that good this year and I thought that, with our playoff hopes on the line, the Jazz would step it up, rise to the occasion and bring us a sweet, sweet victory. Uh. Yeah. About that... It didn't happen. We looked terrible, couldn't hit uncontested shots and lost by nine. It was worse than it sounds. With a minute to play, I thought to myself that, if they needed a good reaction shot for TV, I'd be the poster boy for the "man, it sucks to be a Jazz fan right now" expression. Houston won that night, meaning that, in order to make the playoffs, we'd need to beat the Lakers in L.A. and we'd also need the Rockets to lose to the hapless Sacramento Kings at home. I'd later discover that Sacramento wasn't even sending four or five of their key players on the trip. In other words, we were done for. We wouldn't be making the playoffs yet again and our season was, effectively, over. My thoughts proved prophetic, as the Rockets thrashed the Kings last night before our 8:30 battle with the Lakers had even tipped.

So that was it. It was over. We had nothing to play for. I just hoped our players didn't know that.

The Kobe Bryant Farewell Tour

It's here that our story really gets exciting. You see, unless you've been hiding under a rock somewhere for the past six or seven months, you're well aware that this was Kobe Bryant's final season in the NBA. After a 20-year career, he was calling it quits and hanging up the Nikes. Finally, for the first time in two decades, it seemed like Kobe was actually being a nice guy. This year, he was respectful with the media, kind to the fans and seemed, for once, to actually be a nice guy. He was smiling more, he looked like he was relaxed and, you know what? He almost seemed likable!

Wait, wait. What am I saying? This is Kobe Bryant we're talking about. The Kobe Bryant that had been a bitter rival of my Utah Jazz since those infamous playoff airballs in his 1997 rookie season. This is the guy that knocked the Jazz out of the playoffs three years in a row. This is the guy that waived Karl Malone off for a pick during an All-Star game. While I do admit that "NBA Courtside 2 featuring Kobe Bryant" was an awesome game on Nintendo 64 and that "Afro Kobe" was an exciting player to watch as I grew up, this guy, ultimately, was the arrogant, cocky jerk that I'd come to hate since my childhood. And now he was playing the final game of his career against the Utah Jazz. At long last, we would get the last laugh and send Kobe packing for good. Heck, the previous time we faced the Lakers this season, we beat them by 48 - the worst loss of Kobe's entire career. It was glorious.

My family is full of big-time Jazz fans. I told my mom yesterday afternoon that we should beat the Lakers by 35 points - 15 points, minimum. I told my dad and brother, Austin, that losing to this Lakers team would be almost unforgivable. Let me clarify - these are not your daddy's Los Angeles Lakers. These Lakers SUCK. They entered last night's game with a 16-65 record - the worst in their franchise's history. I almost felt bad that Kobe was being sent out with such horrendous, lazy teammates. Almost. But it was Kobe and I hate him and I loved that the Lakers had become one of the laughing stocks of the league. Surely, we'd beat them. Maybe we'd let Kobe have a little fun, but there was no way we'd lose to this team, regardless of playoff implications.

#MambaDay

The Lakers Kobe kept things close early, taking full responsibility of his team's scoring (and shooting) efforts for the first half. The Jazz weren't playing very well initially, but we eventually pulled ahead by a dozen or so and I remember commenting to my mom, with whom I was watching the game, that it looked like we were finally going to blow them away, much to the dismay of the celebrities in attendance.

The world was watching, certainly.

Rumor has it that the worst seats in the house were going for $800 and those who wanted to sit courtside were paying, allegedly, 20 times that much. Ridiculous, if you ask me, but whatever. Their money, not mine. Good for them.

As the game went on, it was evident to even the least knowledgeable of viewers that Kobe (as was often the case for most of his career) had no intention of passing. Basically, the other four Lakers on the court at any given time were tasked with two or three responsibilities: get the ball to Kobe, get the heck out of the way and rebound it if he misses. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Let's get one thing straight - Bald, 37-year-old Kobe ain't Afro Kobe. No, no. Bald, 37-year-old Kobe is a relatively inaccurate jump-shooter who occasionally gets a couple to drop for him and semi-frequently turns the ball over. As he continued hucking up mid-range shots, he clanked a couple off the backboard without even drawing iron and even missed a couple point-blank lay-ups. I chuckled a little bit without much concern for the outcome of the game. It was inevitable that Kobe would "get his," so to speak, and his team, as per usual, would likely end up losing the game.

But Kobe mustered his inner "Mamba" and willed his team himself within a few points of the Jazz with only a few minutes left in regulation. By George, the Lakers he even took the lead with under a minute to play! Are you kidding me, Jazz? Stomp on the cockroach and get it done! The Staples Center was going berserk and the internet, as they say, was in the process of breaking.

Indeed, the world was watching.

A Hollywood ending

When Kobe hit a jumper to take the lead with 32 seconds left, I had a pretty good feeling that it was over, just as ESPN could have scripted it. David Stern would have been incredibly proud of the way things were shaping up. In my wildest dreams, I could envision Kobe bricking a game winner - the last shot of his career - as the Jazz squeaked out a pathetic victory. But, deep down inside, I knew that wasn't going to happen. A couple of free throws later, Kobe Bryant had scored 60 points - SIXTY - and he was checking out for the final time with four seconds on the clock, to the raucous applause of the thousands in attendance and the millions watching around the world. Kobe once again had beaten the Jazz and he was retiring on top of the world.

Gutted. Sickened. Furious. Words almost cannot describe my anger following the Jazz-Lakers game that took place last night. It gave me a headache, to be quite honest. I drove home in silence, half of the way because I didn't want to think about it. As excited as I had been about the end of the '14-'15 season, that's exactly the opposite of how mad I was last night. Let's put it this way - I can't remember being this mad about the outcome of a sporting event since Michael Jordan pushed off in 1998.

This was a night people will be talking for the rest of our lives. No doubt, Kobe put on a show for his adoring fans - and good for him. That's exactly what everyone wanted to see, and he gave it to them. Sixty points. That's incredible. But let's take a closer look at a couple things - if nothing else, simply as a way for me to vent my feelings and in hopes that maybe one or two of you will take pity on me and make me feel justified in thinking this way. Surely, I can't be the ONLY person with whom last night's results didn't sit quite right.

A-Town analysis

It was a glorious night for Sportscenter, I'm sure. I didn't watch it. Couldn't bring myself to do that. But the great thing for Kobe is that whenever anyone reflects on his final game, nobody will ever bring up the fact that it took him FIFTY SHOT ATTEMPTS to score 60 points. I'm coming off the heels of a churchball season in which I'm not quite certain that I took 50 shot attempts, period. In fact, we're probably lucky that he ONLY scored 60 points. If reining (and likely repeating) MVP Steph Curry was allowed to shoot 50 times in one game, he probably would have scored 120 points on the Jazz. If Kobe had even a remotely efficient shooting night, based on the number of three-pointers he was shooting, he probably should have more like 80 points.

Let's take a look at Kobe's shot chart from last night, as tweeted out by @ESPNStatsInfo:

Not to toot my own horn (@atownmania), but I thought I summed the shot chart up perfectly when I retweeted the photo and added, "Looks like he made a couple of 'em."

Now, I didn't see the game when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points, but I truly believe that what wound up lost in the hubbub of Hollywood glitz and glamour is the realization that what the world witnessed last night was the most selfish display I have ever seen in all of sports. LOOK HOW MANY SHOTS HE MISSED! And a lot of those misses WEREN'T EVEN CLOSE! But, in the end, nobody cares about the 28 shots that he missed, only the 60 points that he scored. He missed 15 threes, people. That's not good. "Black Mamba"? More like "Black Hole"! This was the Kobe of old - the Kobe who only cares for himself and his own stats and self-promotion. If any other player (think LeBron James, first and foremost) had taken 50 shots in a game with such sporadic (in)efficiency, they'd have been burned alive at the stake, but this was Kobe and, uh, "Kobe forever and always," I guess.

Why, oh why, did it have to be us?

Perhaps, for me, the most infuriating thing of all is that the Lakers sucked horrendously all season long - remember, we beat them by 48 last time and they didn't seem affected by the loss whatsoever - and Kobe finally decides to show up and play ball. I've always looked at teams like the good Laker teams and the Spurs... the New England Patriots, as well... as teams who can flip a switch whenever they want and say, "The regular season doesn't mean crap for us, but let's just make the playoffs and then we'll actually try." That bugs the heck out of me. Well, Kobe flipped the switch last night. I didn't think he was particularly good and he definitely wasn't dominant, by any stretch of the imagination. If you're going to shoot 50 times, you're going to score some points. But Kobe put on a doozy of a performance in the fourth quarter, single-handedly outscoring the Jazz, and we just couldn't deal with it. He made shots when it counted and we didn't.

Based on the way Kobe handled himself this season, I probably would have thought it was cool to see him put on a show like that, as long as it were against any other team in the league. Why couldn't his final game have been against the New Orleans Pelicans or the New York Knicks or the Oklahoma City Thunder? That would have been fine with me. But, of course, as the basketball gods intended for it to be, his final game was against my Utah Jazz... This was against my team that I've loved for my entire life. It was not cool, it was not fun to watch and I didn't enjoy it at all.

As if the images of Michael Jordan PUSHING OFF for his supposed "final shot" in 1998 haven't scarred me badly enough, now I get MJ's "final game" and Kobe's final game, combined. The double whammy of double whammies. I've lived with the outcome of the 1998 NBA Finals for 18 years now (wow) and it's rough. It really is. That was one of the worst moments of my life. Honestly, it was! That was really difficult to watch as a 12-year-old kid and it still brings back some bad memories. Now, every time somebody mentions Kobe Bryant's legacy, they'll say, "Hey, remember when Kobe dropped 60 in his finale game? Who were they playing again? Oh yeah, it was the Utah Jazz, wasn't it?" Once again, the Jazz are an iconic part of basketball history, forever ingrained in the annals of time. Why did it have to be us? Of all the teams, why?

I see pride, I see power... J/K, I don't.

I tried to avoid Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and anything else last night that would have rubbed Kobe's glorious evening in my face any more than was necessary, so I didn't really get to hear what the Jazz players were thinking after the game ended. But I'll tell you what - I'll be terribly disappointed if nobody went straight back to the locker room and kicked a chair over or something. That's what I would have done. And, by the sounds of it, I'm not confident that there was any chair-kicking involved.

Based on the tweets I saw from Jazz beat writer @DJJazzyJody (who I typically find to be a combination of moderately informative, smug and annoying), it seems like many of the Jazz players were just happy to have been there.

Trey Lyles: "It’s a great thing to be a part of."

We lost to one of the most pathetic teams in recent memory, Trey. That's not a great thing to be a part of.

Rodney Hood: "I was in awe. I know we’re playing against him, but that's a [heck] of a way to go out into the sunset."

Sounds like the more he scored, the more we watched. The only one who deserved to be watching in awe was Trey Burke, who has been inexplicably benched for the the final dozen games of the season. He had a front row seat and had no chance of getting off the bench last night.

Gordon Hayward: "It was a fun night, a historic night. ... It was definitely vintage Kobe. It was cool."

Cool, Gordon? Cool?!? You know what I bet was cool? When you were over on the sideline hugging celebrities with a minute left to play and a deficit to dig our team out of. I bet that was cool. Get your head in the game, bro. We lost the game. You know what else would have been cool? If you guys actually played some defense instead of letting a washed up hall of famer score at will.

The only comments I actually didn't mind after last night's loss were from Joe Ingles ("I’ll probably be in some of his highlights for the rest of my life. I’ll show them to my kids someday." - because I know he's joking) and Rudy Gobert (who tweeted out three blushing-face emojis just after the game ended. Where is the fire, guys? Shouldn't they be devastated after blowing it like that?

Maybe I'm missing something (admittedly, and as previously mentioned, I wasn't going out of my way to pay attention to anything that happened after that final buzzer), but why the BEEEEEEEP were we just happy to be there? Where the BEEEEEEEEEEP is the sense of pride? Why the BEEEEEEEEP didn't we say, "All right, guys, this is Kobe's final game and the entire world is watching us. Let's send that son-of-a-gun home with a big, fat L tonight. Let's get out there and get it done..."??

Call me crazy, but I thought that last night's loss to Kobe and the Lakers was extremely, extremely disappointing - an outright embarrassment for the organization.

Diary of a mad white man

I consider myself a very patient, faithful and forgiving Utah Jazz fan, sometimes even at the expense of reality. I think we've got a decent team. I think we've got a bunch of nice guys. I know we're never going to make it back to the Finals, but every year I fool myself into believing that maybe this year something special will happen. This year was no exception; nothing special happened (unless you consider losing four of our last five and handing the Rockets a playoff berth "special"). But this year, unlike other years, I'm straight-up mad at the Jazz. We choked hardcore. There's no other way to look at it, if you're like me.

However, as expected, many of Utah's crummy "talking heads" on the radio were filled with lines that began with "I get why some Jazz fans are upset, but..." BUT WHAT?!? BUT NOTHING! If you're not upset, are you really a Jazz fan? Who in their right mind would watch last night's game and say, "It's fine. We're a really young, inexperienced team, but there's always next year." I've finally come to my senses, and guess what? WE'VE BEEN A REALLY YOUNG, INEXPERIENCED TEAM FOR LIKE THREE YEARS NOW! When are things going to change? When are things going to get better?

"Jazz fans shouldn't be angry; last night's game was meaningless." WELL, IF IT DIDN'T MATTER, WHY DID WE PLAY IT? WHY DID WE EVEN BOTHER SHOWING UP?? Sure, it wouldn't have gotten us into the playoffs (that's our own fault), but it was, nationally, one of the biggest games of the last decade or so. Kobe was a legend for this generation and everybody had their calendars marked for that game. I mean, everybody except for the Jazz and their naive fans, I guess.

I'm mad at the Jazz because we shouldn't have been in that situation to begin with. I think if we were still in playoff contention or even headed to the playoffs, we wouldn't have laid down for Kobe like we did. All we needed to have done prior to last night's game was to have won one extra game. Check it out: this year, the Jazz had some bad losses that could have (and should have) been prevented. After a quick glance at the roster, we had two losses to Detroit, Orlando and Sacramento. We had road losses to Minnesota and the Knicks. And we had home loses to Brooklyn, New Orleans and (the killer) a devastating loss to the Clippers' "JV squad" when it counted the most. If we had won just one or two of those games, we wouldn't have been in this situation in the first place. But yet again, the Jazz found a way to put them in a position where our ability to get into the postseason depended on another team losing, and it didn't pan out.

Maybe the nerds were right

I got a lot of crap about being a sports fan from people while working at Salt Lake Comic Con. I found this particularly ironic, since comic conventions are events that pride themselves on being a safe place where people can go and be themselves, no matter what they're interested in. (So let me get this straight - it's ok for a grown man to collect "My Little Pony" dolls, but not to cheer for a sports team? Really?) Anyway, that was weird, but, as I was thinking about sports, in general, last night, I came to consider that maybe they were right. Obviously, I'm not going to give up on sports entirely, but I can't remember a time when I was so upset about a movie or TV show that I felt physically ill. This is not to say that watching Kobe go out on top made me start vomiting or anything, but I, physically and mentally, did not feel like myself after that game. I've seen some terrible and stupid movies in my day and I've struggled to keep up with shows that I knew wouldn't last, but being a sports fan is a lifelong commitment to disappointment, and that's something that "America's Got Talent" viewers can't even say. That's just three months of watching that ultimately ends in disappointment and then it's over - and, heck, you can easily switch rooting allegiances along the way without being branded a "bandwagon fan" for doing so.

Back to sports. Pick any given team in any given league. If there are 30 teams in a league, which is about normal, statistically, your team has a 97% chance of not winning the championship. In my lifetime, my actual team that I had legitimately been cheering for long-term has won one championship. That was the New Orleans Saints in 2011, the culmination of 10 years of misery as an out-of-state fan. The Jazz made it to the Finals twice and lost both times. If they could just win one championship - one championship - then I could die a happy man. But that will never happen and my greatest efforts in cheering them on to victory will continue to be forever futile.

I'm frustrated, most of all, that I have been giving the Jazz way more than they have been giving to me, year in and year out. I've invested hours and hours, evenings and evenings, money, gas mileage and, occasionally, my social life for this team, and what do I get back? Nothing, really. Even if the Jazz had made the playoffs this year, we'd likely have been swept by the Warriors, so where would the fun be in that?

It's taken me years to get to this point, but now I can honestly say it - this team isn't working. I like our guys. I like them all. Even Gordon, who the fans place much too heavy a burden upon. Even Trey Burke, who the organization apparently detests for some unknowable reason. I like Jingling Joe and Trevor Booker and I like Jeff Withey, too, even though I hated him at Kansas. I think the team has great chemistry, which prevents us from becoming the Sacramento Kings. But, clearly, this team is not going to win a championship the way we are built right now. Things might have been different if we could have stayed healthy all year long, but even then, we couldn't have taken out any of the top three seeds in the West. I think we could be Eastern Conference champions, for sure, but that's a geographical impossibility.

Gosh dang it, I just want to win. For once in my life, I want to watch the Jazz raise a banner that says "WORLD CHAMPIONS" on it. And I'm mad because I care. I love this team. Too much, in fact. And I'm tired of them playing down to their competition and breaking my heart like they did last night for Kobe Bryant's final game.

Tell me I'm not alone.