Kobe Bryant. 5x NBA Champion. 2x NBA Finals MVP. 2008 Most Valuable Player. 18x NBA All-Star. 4x NBA All-Star Game MVP. 11x All-NBA First Team. 2x All-NBA Second Team. 2x All-NBA Third Team. 9x NBA All-Defensive First Team. 3x All-Defensive Second Team. 2x Scoring Champ. SECOND HIGHEST SCORING GAME in NBA history. 4th on the NBA All-Time scoring list.
TWO TIME OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST. Kobe has only ever worn 2 numbers in his professional career. Both 8 and 24 have been retired by the Los Angeles Lakers. The number 10, however, is the only number Kobe has ever worn to represent his country. Technically speaking, he also won a gold medal in the FIBA Americas Tournament. The United States needed to qualify for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and going undefeated in that tournament secured their Olympic berth. So across three tournaments (2007 FIBA Americas, 2008 Beijing Olympics, and 2012 London Olympics), Kobe and Team USA finished 26-0 en route to 3 gold medals.
This video was made simply to marvel at the magic of the Mamba. His primarily role on Team USA was that of a defender, but during moments where his team truly needed him, Bryant was brilliant. His LA Lakers had lost to the Boston Celtics earlier in 2008 and when it got tight against the reigning World Champion Spain in the final, with a gold medal on the line, Kobe dug deep and hit big shot after big shot. The Mamba struck Spain with a dagger of a four point play (that also fouled out Rudy Fernandez, Spain’s leading scorer) and then silenced the crowd.
If you listen at the end, I left the audio for when the players receive their gold medals and are mentioned by name. The cheers for each American player were pretty even…save for one.
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I apologize for any roughness in audio/video quality. You wouldn't believe how many different places I had to pull clips from in addition to going through hours and hours and hours of the full games. Also, these aren't even all the games from the Olympics (either one) but I had to make due with what I could get. I even manage to pull one from a hard drive that was almost long since forgotten!
21 сен 2024
