When I first got heavily into the NBA, it was around the time of Kobe Bryant‘s farewell tour. He had a few vintage Kobe games that year but you could tell that his body was struggling. Over 20 years of competing at the highest level, his body had had enough of the grind. In a letter announcing his retirement, he said that his mind was still sharp but his body couldn’t take the beating of NBA basketball anymore.
The NBA that I knew was so inexplicably linked to Kobe. He had been around so long and you almost had a feeling that he would never retire.