LeBron James was a teenager when he first met Kobe Bryant at a youth basketball camp, in awe of his idol and ears open as the Los Angeles Lakers star offered advice to the prodigy that has lasted to this day.
“I was just listening,” James said. “I was just trying to soak everything up I could. I remember one thing he said was that if you want to try and be great at it, and want to be one of the greats, you’ve got to put the work in.”
James put in the work and followed Bryant’s path — from making the leap from high school straight to the NBA, to winning NBA titles and, eventually, to playing in Los Angeles.
Photo: Bill Streicher-USA Today
With a driving right-handed layup, James no longer chased Bryant, he zoomed past him for third place on the NBA’s career scoring list.
“I’m just happy to be in any conversation with Kobe Bryant, one of the all-time greats to ever play,” James said.
With a tribute to Bryant written on his Nikes, James on Saturday scored 29 points in front of a roaring 76ers’ crowd, but the Lakers fell short in a 108-91 loss to Philadelphia.
James scribbled “Mamba 4 Life” as he chased Bryant, the five-time champion, in Philly.
Fans stood with phones pointed toward the court, waiting to capture a slice of history that came when James scored the milestone basket with 7 minutes, 23 seconds left in the third quarter.
James entered 18 points shy of passing Bryant and the layup gave him 33,644 points. James stands third with 33,655. Bryant finished his career with 33,643, all with the Lakers.
“Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames. Much respect my brother #33644,” Bryant tweeted.
James waved to the Philadelphia crowd that gave him a rousing standing ovation when the mark was announced by the public address announcer. The Sixers also posted a graphic of the NBA’s top 10 career scorers, with images of James in Lakers and Miami Heat jerseys.
The 35-year-old entered averaging at least 25 points for the 16th straight season.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s career scoring leader with 38,387 points and Karl Malone is second at 36,928. James is on pace to pass Abdul-Jabbar in about three seasons.
The top four scorers in the NBA played for the Lakers, who signed James as a free agent in 2018.
James passed Bryant in Philadelphia, where the retired Lakers star was born.
James, who played in eight consecutive NBA Finals, has 6,911 post-season points with Cleveland and Miami that do not count in the official total.
His stories in the locker room on Bryant seemed to stretch on as long as his list of milestones.
Like another time when he was still in high school and was gifted a pair of red, white and blue Nikes from Bryant. James wore a size 15, Bryant was a 14, but he wore the sneakers anyway.
Or the way James was inspired how Bryant always found some sort of slight to use as fuel to improve.
James would have a “dream come true” when he lined up side-by-side with Bryant as teammates in the 2008 Olympics as part of the “Redeem Team,” leading the US to a gold medal in Beijing.
“There’s just too much. The story is just too much,” James said. “The story doesn’t make sense. Make a long story short, now I’m here in a Lakers uniform, in Philadelphia where he’s from.”
Elsewhere, the Bulls crushed the Cavaliers 118-106, the Jazz mastered the Mavericks 112-107, the Thunder silenced the Timberwolves 113-104 and the Nets overcame the Pistons 121-111 in overtime.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier