Los Angeles Lakers

TBT: A year ago today, Kobe Bryant scored 60 in his NBA farewell

Published Apr. 13, 2017 10:02 a.m. ET

Nunzio Ingrassia

No one really knew what to expect from Kobe Bryant on April 13, 2016. He was entering the final game of arguably the worst season in his illustrious career, but the then-37-year-old had shown flashes every so often of the Black Mamba, like when he scored 35 points in only 27 minutes three days earlier.

Even the Los Angeles Lakers icon didn’t really know what he had to give in that final game against the Utah Jazz. But he soon discovered it was about to be a very special night – one way or another.

"After the first couple minutes, I was like, 'Oh, [expletive],'" Bryant said to ESPN recently, reflecting on that game. "It became apparent really, really quickly that this night was not going to go down with me just playing OK. It was either going to have to be an epic one or the worst one ever, because they were just going to keep throwing me the damn ball and the crowd wanted me to shoot every time – almost to the point where I felt bad for my teammates, because if they took a shot, the crowd was ready to boo. So it was like, 'Oh, [expletive]. I gotta go.'"

"When we got back into it, I said, 'OK, I've got one more push here,'" he said, "and the shots started going in toward the end and the game got closer and it was like, 'OK, I can't feel my legs, but I've got to have enough to knock one more down.' And then I knock one more down, and it's like, 'OK, I've got to have enough to knock one more down.' "

"That 3, I swear to God, I thought it was short as [expletive]," Bryant says. "Like, really, really short. I couldn't even feel my legs when I jumped. As soon as I started going up, they disappeared. [I was thinking], 'Oh, [expletive].' Then I thought it was going to be short and left. So you see me kind of holding that follow through, trying to lean that [expletive] in. You see it go through, and it kind of swoops in. So I was like, 'Holy [expletive], it went in.'"