It’s someone’s birthday today. Yep, Kobe Bryant has turned 33 years old. He’s officially in the latter third of his NBA career. I remember watching the 2008 Olympics, with Kobe playing on his 30th birthday, and thinking “Damn, dude is getting old.” Three years later, that number is only going up.
I had planned for a few weeks on doing some mega-piece of words on him. But I’ve written a lot on Kobe himself and his best plays, so at this point there really isn’t much else I can say on the man. At this point in his career, nearly everything can be explained in numbers, and the sole purpose of the rest of his career is to get more numbers: break six rings, catch Kareem‘s 38,387 points, etc.
You can’t use numbers to define Kobe Bryant. But you can try. They tell part of the story. One of my favorites: he has 5 Dime Magazine covers. That’s big. Here are another 33 interesting numbers about the now 33-year-old Kobe Bryant…
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1) Highest season PER was from 2005-06: 28.11
2) That season, he also had by far the highest usage rate (35.3) of any player ever since they started keeping track
3) He might’ve reached his overall individual apex at 24, dropping 30, 7, 6 and 2.2 steals a night in 2002-03
4) In January of that season, he averaged 43.4 points a game, the highest number for any player besides Wilt Chamberlain
5) In February of that season, Kobe scored 93 points (27-48 shooting) on Denver within seven quarters in 24 hours
6) During his string of 35-point games, he scored 551 points in 13 games
7) During that same stretch, he scored more points than any other Laker besides Shaquille O’Neal and Derek Fisher had over the entire year to that point (this was in February mind you)
8 ) He once took 47 shots in a 2002 game in Boston
9) Last season, he actually averaged 26.9 points per 36 minutes, the third-highest number of his career
10) Last season, he also averaged 5.4 rebounds and 5.0 assists per 36 minutes, his best overall numbers since he was 29 years old
11) He has five 60-point games
12) Four of those 60-point games came in a span of 457 days (Dec. 20, 2005 – March 22, 2007)
13) Including playoffs, he has 117 40-plus point games and 25 50-plus games
14) In 2006-07, Bryant had 10 50-point games, the only player besides Chamberlain to do so in a season
15) In his 55-point game against the Wizards in 2003, Kobe scored 23 points during a 5:42 stretch in the first half. With 4:45 still left in the second quarter, Kobe hit a jumper to give him 40 points
16) A couple of interesting stats: Kobe had games with 62 against Dallas, 56 against Memphis, 52 against Utah and 51 against Denver and either sat for the entire fourth quarter or pretty much all of it
17) As #8: 707 regular season games
18) As #24: 396 regular season games
19) As #8, regular season: 23.9 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 4.5 apg
20) As #24, regular season: 27.8 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 5.1 apg
21) As #8, playoffs: 126 games
22) As #24, playoffs: 82 games
23) As #8, playoffs: 22.9 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 4.5 apg
24) As #24, playoffs: 29.2 ppg, 5.4 rpg, 5.2 apg
25) With Kobe, the Lakers have either made the Finals, won it all or lost to the eventual champs 10 out of the last 13 years
26) In 15 seasons with Kobe, the Lakers have won at least 50 games 11 times (and were on pace for more than 50 during the strike-shortened season).
27) They’ve won at least 56 games in 10 of those seasons.
28) They’ve averaged 53 wins a season since 1996-97.
29) His career regular season record is 792-406.
30) Kobe has played more minutes by his age than anyone in NBA history.
31) Has played in 38 NBA Finals games. Other great current NBA players: LeBron (10 games), Wade & Dirk (12 games), Shaq (30), Duncan (22), KG (13)
32) When Kobe scored his first NBA point, LeBron was 11 years old, Dwight Howard was 10 and Kevin Durant/Derrick Rose had both just turned 8
33) If he plays 82 games again this year (if we even have 82 games), Kobe would need to average exactly 26 points a game to eclipse 30,000 career points
What is the craziest number of all?
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