HOUSTON – Repeatedly, he tried to turn back the clock, only to have the clock turn him back instead; a rejection as emphatic as any Roy Hibbert swat.
But as Kobe Bryant, 37, crisscrossed the Eastern half of the continent over the past two weeks, surviving the Lakers’ longest trip in seven years, he gradually adjusted his game to reality.
In Minneapolis on Wednesday, he sat out the fourth quarter and overtime after urging Coach Byron Scott to let young stars D’Angelo Russell and Julius Randle carry the load. On Saturday, in a 126-97 loss to the Houston Rockets, the soon-to-be retired pieced together his best game of the season, scoring a team-high 25 points on an efficient 9-of-16 shooting.