Kobe's Masterpiece

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The number is as synonymous with Kobe Bryant's career as 8 or 24.

Bryant's two decades in the NBA have been highlighted by five championships, seven Finals appearances, 15 postseason trips and too many individual awards and honors to mention. But for many, a regular-season game against the Toronto Raptors 10 years ago remains the high-water mark for one of the game's greatest players.

On Jan. 22, 2006, Bryant scored 81 points in the Los Angeles Lakers' 122-104 victory over the Raptors. Wilt Chamberlain, with his 100-point performance for the Philadelphia Warriors in 1962, is the only player to score more in a single NBA game.

The significance of the achievement isn't lost on Bryant as he traverses his 20th and final NBA season. When he wrote a letter to fans this past November announcing his retirement, the photo behind the text was of him walking off the court after scoring 81 points -- his right arm stretched high with his index finger pointing to the sky. When he introduced the "Channel the Villain/Unleash the Hero" slogan for his final season with an online video, the opening scene featured him scoring his 81st point at the free throw line.

"It's really a testament to the power of imagination, honestly," Bryant told ESPN.com earlier this month. "There's a lot of players who come up now who don't think 80 points is possible. You think 50, and if you're really hot -- 60. I never had that limit. Ever. I never, ever thought that way. I always thought 80 was possible. I thought 90 was possible. I thought 100 was possible. Always. I think that game is a testament to what happens when you put no ceiling to what you're capable of doing."

It's with that ambitious mindset that Bryant put on one of the most impressive individual displays in NBA history. This is the story of the game in which Bryant made 81 possible, as seen through the eyes of those who were a part of it.

PART I: ?AN OPPORTUNITY FOR HIM TO BLOSSOM?

The Lakers made the playoffs in each of Bryant's first eight seasons. After they lost the 2004 NBA Finals, coach Phil Jackson left in a messy divorce and star center Shaquille O'Neal was jettisoned to the Miami Heat. The next season, Rudy Tomjanovich resigned as coach after 43 games for health reasons, and the Lakers missed the postseason for just the second time since 1976. After leaving Los Angeles, Jackson had written a book in which he characterized Bryant as "uncoachable." Still, he came back after a year away at the behest of Lakers executive Jeanie Buss, whom Jackson had been dating since 1999.

Kobe Bryant: It sounds crazy to say -- at least I think most people would find it to be crazy -- but scoring 81 points wasn't surprising to me. I hope people don't take that as being arrogant or whatever the case may be, but you have to understand at my age at that time [27] and being in my physical prime, it wasn't surprising. Working all summer the way that I did with the track work and the conditioning work and making a thousand jumpers a day, it wasn't surprising.

PART II: ?I'LL DO IT WHEN WE REALLY NEED IT?

A month before playing Toronto, Bryant outscored the Dallas Mavericks by himself through three quarters 62-61 (the Lakers' lead was 95-61). Bryant played only 33 minutes that night and sat out the entire fourth quarter of the Lakers' blowout win over the eventual Western Conference champions. When he was asked after the game how many points he would have finished with had he played the fourth quarter, Bryant shrugged his shoulders. "Probably 80," he said. "I was in a really, really good groove."

Brian Shaw: After the third quarter, the players were on the bench and the coaches went out and huddled on the court. Phil asked me to go ask Kobe if he wanted to stay in the game and try to get 70 and then come out. So I went up to Kobe and said, "Hey, Coach wants to know if you want to stay in for the first few minutes of the fourth quarter, get 70 and then come out." He looked up at the scoreboard, and he said, "Nah, I'll get it another time." I looked at him and I kind of got mad. I said: "What?! You have a chance to get 70 points. How many people can say they scored 70 points? Just stay in the first few minutes and get another eight points, get 70 and then come out of the game." He said: "I'll do it when we really need it. I'll get it when it really matters."

Kobe Bryant: Brian was mad. He was like: "Man, are you crazy? You know what you could score tonight?" I just said, "I'll do it when we really need it." Brian was like, "What?!" It was something that just rolled off my tongue because I trained extremely hard and the physical tools were there. I just felt like I could have a game like that again.

Jeanie Buss: I got really mad at Phil after the game on the drive home. I said, "Why did you take him out?" He said because it was a lopsided game. He said, "That's not what basketball is all about." And I said, "Yeah, but he could have set a record." I just remember being mad at Phil. I wanted him to let Kobe do whatever he wanted. It was so much fun to watch.

Laron Profit: I actually came in for Kobe in the fourth quarter and tore my Achilles. I think later, [in 2013], he knew he tore his because he saw what happened to me. It was on the same spot on the floor, and our reactions were pretty similar.

Kobe Bryant: I felt like that the entire season. That season was a rare thing where my physical abilities matched up with the mental part of the game for me.

Mitch Kupchak: It was the second year of a rebuild and the first year of Phil's return, so we were still finding our way as a team. It was an adjustment with a lot of new players. We were clearly in the rebuild, and we needed everything that Kobe could give us. It wasn't always good enough, but he had a heck of a year. From an entertainment point of view, it was incredible. You knew you were watching something unique that year.

Laron Profit: Phil knew what Kobe could do, but he also wanted to emphasize team. I remember we were at a practice session one day watching film, and Kobe was shooting a lot of shots in the game -- I mean, a lot of shots -- and Phil paused the film. He told this story about Miles Davis and John Coltrane being in the studio one time, and Coltrane goes off on a solo, just an unbelievable solo, and at the end of it, Miles says, "Hey, man, sometimes you have to know when to put that s--- down." His reference was to Kobe having to sometimes pass the ball, but the way he said it had us crying laughing. We all knew what he was saying.

Kobe Bryant: On that team, that season, more games than not I had to take over, but I didn't go into any game with an agenda. I was just reading the flow and seeing what's happening. That's basically what happened against Toronto.

PART III: ?ON PAPER, THE GAME WAS GOING TO SUCK?

Jan. 22, 2006, was conference championship Sunday in the NFL. The Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburgh Steelers advanced to Super Bowl XL. A game between the 21-19 Lakers and the 14-26 Raptors wasn't just an afterthought to sports fans -- even many who covered the team didn't think much about it. Regular Lakers television play-by-play announcer Joel Meyers was in Seattle doing the radio call for the NFC Championship Game. Longtime Lakers and NBA photographer Andrew Bernstein shot the first game of the Staples Center doubleheader that day between the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors before leaving to spend the rest of the day with his kids. Los Angeles Times NBA writer Mark Heisler originally had the day off and missed the game, although he wound up writing a column about Bryant's feat. Even Jack Nicholson was absent from his courtside seat that night.

John Black: It felt like an average Sunday for what was supposed to be an average, normal game. We were a playoff team, but we weren't a championship team, and Toronto wasn't a good team; they weren't a draw. There was nothing about that game that was enticing. It was just another game in late January, the dog days of the season.

Josh Rupprecht: January games are kind of the doldrums of the NBA season. I remember at one point saying, "Can you believe people paid to watch this game?" I know there are a lot of people who say they were at that game that weren't at that game because, when it was over, people were calling our ticket office asking for stubs.

Bill Macdonald: I got the call a couple of weeks before that I was going to call the game. That was my first time doing play-by-play for the Lakers. I was already the pre- and postgame show host. It was a lifelong dream. I figured it would be the only chance I would ever get to do it, and I was going to have some fun with it. It was such a nondescript Sunday. The Lakers were awful, and it was against the Raptors, who meant nothing. On paper, the game was going to suck. For a lot of season-ticket holders, that's probably a game where they gave away or sold their tickets. It was a no-brainer at the time for Joel to go do the NFC Championship Game in Seattle. I remember thanking Joel two or three times in a nice way on the broadcast.

PART IV: ?THE ZONE, IT DIDN'T WORK OUT SO GOOD?

The Lakers entered the game in seventh place in a loaded Western Conference. They were coming off back-to-back losses against Sacramento and Phoenix in which Bryant scored a combined 88 points, and they couldn't afford a home loss to an Eastern Conference bottom-feeder. Bryant's daughter Natalia had turned 3 on Jan. 19, when the Lakers were in Sacramento.

Kobe Bryant: So we had a birthday party at the house the day before the [Raptors] game where we had family and friends come over. It was a great day with face painting and all that stuff. That night, I had my therapist come over and work on my knee because my knee was really giving me a lot of problems. So I had my knee worked on and ordered a pepperoni pizza with grape soda. I finished it that night.

Jalen Rose: Our game plan against the Lakers, initially, we actually started out in a 2-3 zone. We were a team that didn't have much bulk up front. So our coaching staff decided the best approach to playing against the Lakers would be to keep them on a perimeter, and they thought that a 2-3 zone would be the remedy. The zone, it didn't work out so good. What ends up happening in the NBA when you're not pressuring passes, when you're not contesting shots -- you give a guy a rhythm.

Kobe Bryant: I was just trying to work through my knee. My knee was really tight. So at the start of the game, I was just tiptoeing through things. There's one possession early in the game where I drove the ball baseline and just laid it up. From that first possession, I knew if I could get going it's going to be a great night because their rotations were extremely slow. For me to take two dribbles and get all the way to the basket meant I could really do some damage because their rotations were so slow. I started picking up on those things, and then I started attacking a little bit and probing a little bit, and then the jump shot started falling. I started getting in a rhythm, and the knees started loosening up, and then I just got on a roll.

Brian Shaw: That team that we had was up and down. The way we were playing in the first half, we deserved the boos we were getting, and that just fueled Kobe. I remember we came out flat and got down early. Mike James was having a great game for them. He made something like six straight 3s and was hitting all his shots. I think he had almost 30 points [26] that night. This wasn't like the Dallas game, where we were up by 30 points. We were down and had to come back.

Kobe Bryant: We were extremely sluggish, but at the time, I could run all day. I was extremely strong. I felt like, if my teammates weren't going to play, I could get this done on my own, especially tonight because of their defensive rotations. I knew that I could get into a rhythm pretty quickly, I could control the game, I could score any time I wanted to, I could get to the free throw line any time I wanted to. So I felt if I could just stay focused on what I wanted to do, I could get us back into this thing.

Brian Shaw: Once he got in a zone, he pulled everyone along with him. Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown were somewhat physical bigs, but they weren't scoring options on the offensive side. Smush Parker gave us some scoring from time to time but was inconsistent. It was on Kobe to do the majority of the scoring for us to get it going.

Kobe Bryant: I sat out the first six minutes in the second quarter. I could have had 14-15 points in those six minutes. I could have easily had 40 points in the first half with the way I was playing. I just had to stay tuned executionally with what was happening on the court and stay focused on that and not get too perturbed by the score or the crowd booing or anything like that.

Kobe Bryant: I didn't really pay attention to anything that was said. I was just in my own head and in my own zone. I wasn't high-fiving anybody. I wasn't talking to anybody. I just felt like I was in a different dimension. Nothing else mattered. Everything was irrelevant. I really wasn't thinking about the scoring. I was trying to get us back in the game. We were down by 18 points in the third quarter. I remember at the end of the third quarter I had a steal and I had to hustle to keep the ball in bounds, and then I had a dunk and I said, "We're in this game and we're going to win this game." That was the real turning point. Those are the plays that really change momentum -- hustle plays. That's when I knew we're going to win this damn game.