Kobe Bryant was a scorer extraordinaire who could basically drop 30 points a game in his sleep at his peak. Bryant was a two-time scoring champion who averaged 25.0 PPG for his career, and he finds himself in the top 5 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with 33,643 points.
Kobe’s greatest season in terms of scoring the basketball came in 2005-06 when he averaged a ridiculous 35.4 PPG to lead the league. It was the highest mark in the 21st century at the time and ranks second now after James Harden averaged 36.1 PPG in 2018-19. Kobe had many offensive explosions that season, with the most iconic one being when he scored 81 points against the Toronto Raptors in January of 2006. In an interview later that year with Chris Myers, Kobe was asked what he was feeling during that game, and here’s what he had to say.
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“Yeah, I was just feeling emotionally. The feeling I had was I could run all day, the basket is pretty big, didn’t feel like I was in one of those zones where the basket feels like a big bucket, the basket felt bigger and I could see everything that was going on before it was happening.”
Kobe shot 28-46 from the field, 7-13 from three, and 18-20 from the free throw line in that iconic performance. He only had 26 points in the first half but exploded with 55 in the second as the Raptors watched on helplessly. A somewhat little-known fact from that day is also that this was the first and only time that his grandmother attended one of his NBA games in person, and he left her with an unforgettable experience!
Kobe Bryant Said MVPs Didn’t Mean Anything To Him
Despite Kobe’s heroics in that 2005-06 season, he didn’t even finish in the top 3 for MVP. Steve Nash took home the award in 2006 with LeBron James being the runner-up while Dirk Nowitzki was third. During this interview, Kobe was asked about not winning the MVP, and he said that the award doesn’t mean anything to him and that all he cares about is championships.
It would take a couple of years, but Kobe would finally win another championship in 2009, and he made it back-to-back titles by winning again in 2010. He would also get his hands on his first and only MVP award in 2008.
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