BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…April 13, 2016:
Two historic NBA games take place about 400 miles apart in California. In Oakland, the Golden State Warriors beat the Memphis Grizzlies 125-104 to finish the season 73-9, the best record in NBA history. Warriors star Stephen Curry scored 46 points to help the defending NBA champions top the 72-10 mark recorded two decades earlier by the Chicago Bulls. Curry nailed 10 three-pointers in the game, making him the first player ever to hit 400 threes in a single season (he ended with 402). He finished the campaign with 30.1 points per game, winning the NBA scoring title.
Of course, the lasting memory of that season for Golden State will forever be the postseason. The Warriors overcame a three games-to-one deficit in the Western Conference Finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Fine. But they also became the first team in NBA history to blow a three games-to-one lead in the NBA Finals when they were overcome by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Golden State was also just the fourth team in league history to lose Game 7 of the NBA Finals on its home floor.
Simultaneously at Staples Center in Los Angeles, Kobe Bryant played the last game of his legendary 20-year career. He did not go quietly. After struggling through his final season, the worst in L.A. Lakers history (17-65), Bryant scored an astounding 60 points in a 101-96 win over the Utah Jazz. This time, nobody minded him hogging the ball. Bryant launched a staggering 50 field goal attempts, the first time in 49 years an NBA player had put up that many in a game. He scored 15 of the Lakers’ final 17 points, hitting the winning bucket with 31.6 seconds left.
Bryant, hanging it up at the age of 37, lingered on the floor after the game to soak up the adulation before heading into the tunnel. He then reappeared on the court long after fans left to take in the aura one last time with his wife and daughters. It was less than four years later that Kobe and his daughter, Gianna, died along with seven others in a helicopter crash in Calabassas, California, on their way to a girls basketball game at his Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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