Los Angeles Lakers News 2015: Kobe Bryant Announces Retirement After this Season
Kobe Bryant is unique; a player who ventured into the NBA as a high school prodigy who dreamt of playing for the Los Angeles Lakers. He ended up starring for the franchise in all his 20 years in the league, in the process winning five NBA championships and making himself a legend.
With all the accolades, record breakers, clutch performances, and the like, it seems fitting for the 37-year-old to call it a career.
Bryant announced on Sunday via The Players' Tribune that this will be his final season in the NBA, sending a wave of responses, tributes, and all sorts of reports across the sporting world. There is little doubt that he will become one of the most recognizable and popular athletes in history, and the Lakers franchise has always been under his banner for two decades.
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The Lakers star, just like what he's been doing his entire career, is not going to exit without drama. His announcement was made through a first-person, literary type of composition titled "Dear Basketball," where he told a story about his Laker dream as a little boy and how he's dedicated his whole self in the sport. Part of his story said, "But I can't love you obsessively for much longer. My heart can take the pounding, my mind can handle the grind, but my body knows it's time to say goodbye," he said, noticeably admitting that he has reached father time.
In Sunday's close 107-103 defeat to the Indiana Pacers, Bryant showed signs that he's ready to give it up to the Lakers' younger guys. He talked to reporters during the post-game press conference, saying that the decision to retire has been in his mind before the season started. "I've known for a while. A decision like this, you can't make that decision based on outside circumstances… I've decided to accept that I can't actually do this anymore, and I'm OK with that," he said.
There's no blaming him in deciding it's time to go. He's been in the NBA since 1996, and many of his batch mates in the NBA Draft that year are already either retired or have taken coaching and other basketball-related jobs. In all those years, he achieved feats that only a few can boast, even reaching a point of being compared to the greatest to ever play the game — Michael Jordan.
Perhaps the most perceptible reason for Bryant's decision is the recent set of injuries that bothered him for the last three years. He's been visibly struggling this year on a rebuilding franchise.
But at 37 and with 17 All-Star appearances, an MVP award, and a very long list of achievements as a professional basketball player, no one will question what he has done for the sport.
