The Los Angeles Lakers closed out their 2015-16 season Wednesday night with perhaps the defining performance of Kobe Bryant’s career. The most celebrated, imposing and psychotically driven player in franchise history dumped a bucket of cherries on his 20-year career with a 60-point, 50-shot fireworks display to take down the Utah Jazz.
Hours before that unforgettable performance, Bryant’s head coach, Byron Scott, stood on the sideline at the Lakers practice facility, fully enveloped by a super-sized swarm of recorders, microphones, lights and cameras.
A question was posed about this season’s theme: What would Scott take away from the worst year in franchise history, an embarrassing rash of 65 losses, a potentially crippling social media scandal involving the team’s most valuable asset and some of the most consistently bad basketball in the entire league?