Kobe Bryant ended his NBA career with a bang with a memorable 60-point game, but his final season was a struggle. Bryant had many rough shooting nights for the Los Angeles Lakers, and D’Angelo Russell, then a rookie on the team, recently recounted how the icon reacted when he told him to keep shooting on the Backyard Podcast.
“He struggled when I was there,” Russell said. “He wasn’t shooting the ball good, he struggled. And I remember going up to him as a 18-year-old rookie, and I was just like, ‘Keep shooting. Keep shooting. You’ll be all right.’ … He looked at me, he was like, ‘Man, you think I’m worried about these shots?’
“He’s like, ‘I’ve missed more shots than I’ve made like that I could ever even imagine. So, I don’t care if I go 3-20 or 5-15 or whatever,'” Russell added. “He didn’t care about that. His confidence stayed at this level. And I took a lot from that, honestly.”
The late great Bryant was probably the last player in the world to need encouragement to shoot. He could have missed 50 shots in a row and would have believed that the 51st would go in. In total, Bryant missed 14,481 shots in his career, which was an NBA record before LeBron James surpassed him in 2024.
As for that final season, Bryant would finish 2015-16 with averages of 17.6 points, 3.7 rebounds, 2.8 assists, 0.9 steals, and 0.2 blocks per game. He shot just 35.8% from the field and 28.5% from beyond the arc, but the Lakers didn’t mind that, as this was the retirement tour.
The Lakers had given Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, the green light, and he managed to put on one last show in his final game against the Utah Jazz. He recorded 60 points (22-50 FG), four rebounds, four assists, one steal, and one block in a 101-96 Lakers win.
Shaquille O’Neal had challenged Bryant to get 50 points against the Jazz, and he ended up getting 10 more. It was the perfect farewell.
D’Angelo Russell On When Kobe Bryant Snapped At Him
While Bryant’s career was coming to an end in that 2015-16 season, Russell’s was just starting. He was the second pick of the 2015 NBA Draft and admitted on the podcast that he was a bit overwhelmed as a rookie. It took Bryant snapping at him during a game for Russell to get his act together.
“We’re playing against Portland, against [Damian] Lillard,” Russell stated. “Dame was going at us. He had like 30, 40 in the first half… I wasn’t guarding him. I was watching him…. [Bryant] was just like, “What? You going to let the motherf****r score 50?’ Looked at me in front of everybody, and so then I realized, like, I’m here. I’m not watching this on TV.”
Russell was probably referring to a game between the Lakers and Portland Trail Blazers on Jan. 23, 2016. Damian Lillard had 36 points (14-19 FG) in three quarters that night and would have probably gotten to 50 had he played in the fourth.
The Trail Blazers would come away with a comfortable 121-103 win to drop the Lakers to 9-37 on the season. Things wouldn’t get much better the rest of the way, as they ended the campaign with a 17-65 record. It wasn’t the kind of finish Bryant would have wanted, but he at least had that one final brilliant outing against the Jazz.
