Byron Scott was the first to know that Kobe Bryant would be retiring after the season. As it turns out, he found out during the middle of a game when Bryant abruptly informed him.
Scott said on Friday that Bryant casually informed Scott of his decision during the third quarter of the Lakers’ loss to Portland on Saturday.
“I said, ‘KB, I played you 20 minutes in the first half. I’m going to cut those minutes down. I’ve got to cut them down,'” Scott told ESPN. “He said, ‘That’s good, coach. That’s all right. I’m going to announce my retirement after the game.'”
“I said, ‘What?!'” Scott recalled. “That was the shock part. I was in that state for the rest of the game. Even when I was watching him play [and] I was watching him running up and down, I’m going, ‘Did he just tell me [that]?’
“I told him the next day, ‘You know you shocked the s— out of me when you told me that,'” Scott said. “He just started laughing. I said, ‘You really did.’ He said, ‘I know. I could see it on your face.'”
Scott noted that Bryant delivered the news with his trademark coolness.
“It was so casual. It was kind of cool,” Scott said. “[As a] matter [of] fact, he said, ‘You’re the first to know.’ He said, ‘Coach, you’re the first to know that I’m going to announce my retirement.’
“He was at peace when he told me. That’s the only thing I could say. During that game, when I was watching him and putting him in and taking him out, that’s the most relaxed and at peace that I’ve ever seen him.”
Bryant, of course, informed the general public via a Players Tribune letter the next day.
Would Bryant really do it any other way? It just seems so fitting that he’d drop a bomb like that on Scott nonchalantly during the middle of a game.
