8 reasons why Kobe Bryant is the toughest player in NBA history

If you are a basketball fan who didn't grow up on a staple of Kobe Bryant going to work on a nightly basis against the rest of the league, I'm pretty sure you might find the title of this article to be hyperbole - lip service to a player who just turned 40 years old today.

If you were, however, one of those people who noticed not just how Kobe evaded double teams before splashing a turnaround fadeaway from the low post at the fag end of games, but also the look he had on his face while doing so, you might just tend to agree with me.

As psychopathic a competitor as the NBA has ever seen, the Black Mamba is an embodiment of how a person can "squeeze every ounce of juice out of the orange that they could".

That's partly because of his insane work ethic, and partly because of his mental toughness and the work he put in to become the best player on the planet. Here are 8 reasons why the 'greatest Laker of all time', to quote Magic Johnson, is the toughest player in NBA history:

#8 The Matt Barnes incident

Kobe and Matt Barnes after their final faceoff

There are quite a few incidents that I can think of when Kobe displayed superhuman toughness - but none of them are quite like this particular occasion when the Lakers squared up to their Finals opponents from 2009 in the Orlando Magic during a regular season game in March 2010.

In the third quarter, Orlando's Matt Barnes attempted to make Kobe flinch on an inbounds pass. He faked throwing the ball right in his face, and Bryant didn't move — like, at all. Not just that, Kobe doesn't even hint as if the move had any sort of effect on his psyche.

Here's what Barnes had to say in 2010 to Sports Illustrated:

“That scared me a little. I mean, that wasn’t even human. And then I saw the replay, and I was like, this close to him, and he didn’t flinch. I didn’t know what I expected, maybe something to happen, but he didn’t flinch.”

And here's Bryant, via the L.A. Daily News in 2015:

"He’s crazy, but he’s not that crazy. So I didn’t bother flinching. It was a split second and I processed it pretty quickly. I realized he wasn’t going to do it. We laughed and joked about it a lot when he played together.”

Here's what I have to say:

Kobe Bryant's nerves are made of steel.

#7 2009-10 NBA season

Kobe suffered multiple injuries throughout the season and as a result, missed nine games. That was still not enough to spare NBA teams from his prowess in clutch periods, as he hit 6 game-winning shots during the season to boost the Lakers' record to a Conference-best 57-25.

Bryant suffered an avulsion fracture in his right index finger in a game against the Minnesota Timberwolves in mid-December. Despite the injury, Bryant elected to continue playing with it, rather than take any time off to rest the injury.

After being sidelined for five games from an ankle injury later in the season, Bryant made his return and made another clutch three-pointer to give the Lakers a one-point lead with four seconds remaining against the Memphis Grizzlies. Bryant finished the regular season missing four of the final five games, due to injuries to his knee and finger.

#6 His first great Finals game

The Kobe-Shaq Lakers made it to their first Finals in 2000 after beating off competition from the Kings, Suns and the Trail Blazers in the Western Conference playoffs. The Blazers were fancied to win it all at the start of the season, but lost in 7 games during the Conference Finals, and the Lakers had then replaced them as favourites to win the championship against a Pacers team that didn't have the same star power.

The series kicked off with the Lakers winning Game 1 on home court. But Jalen Rose's malicious move of putting his feet in Kobe's landing space caused him to have an ankle injury, and Kobe couldn't play Game 3 at Indianapolis. He made his comeback in Game 4 as the Indiana Pacers were looking to even the series at 2-2 at home, and they almost pulled it off.

But the Lakers held on in overtime despite Shaq fouling out with nearly 4 minutes left to play. Kobe put them on his back and got the game-winning put-back that gave the Lakers a 3-1 series lead. That he did so much while playing with a severely limiting injury is just another footnote to add to Kobe's collection of clutch moments.

#5 Bouncing back from season-ending injuries at the end of his career

Affected by an Achilles injury in April 2013, the Mamba made a comeback to write the last chapter of his career with the Lakers 19 games into the 2013-14 season. Bryant resumed practising in November 2013 and took the court for 6 games before suffering from a tibia fracture that ruled him out for the rest of the season.

After coming back at the start of the 2014-15 season, he was still suffering from soreness in his knees, feet, back, and Achilles tendons. Kobe managed to average 26.4 points per game in the first 27 games of his season, while also becoming the only player aged 36 or above to record multiple triple-doubles with a 23 point, 11 assist, 11 rebound performance against the Nuggets in a win.

On January 21, 2015, Bryant suffered a rotator cuff tear in his right shoulder while driving baseline for a two-handed dunk against the New Orleans Pelicans. Though he is right-handed, he returned to play in the game and ran the offense while shooting, dribbling, and passing almost exclusively with his left hand, before undergoing season-ending surgery for the second straight season.

#4 2012-13 NBA season

Lakers go off the floor after a loss to the Atlanta Hawks, March 2013

Kobe's championship window had been closing slowly but surely ever since he won his first championship without Shaq. As mentioned before, he'd had multiple injuries and knocks to deal with in the very season that he won his 5th championship in the 2009-10 season, and the emergence of Miami Heat's superteam meant that the Lakers had to do something drastic in the offseason in order to surround Kobe with the requisite talent to win a championship.

Dwight Howard and Steve Nash were duly traded for, and the hype around the Lakers before the start of the 2012-13 season was about as much as it could've gotten. But they never clicked together, as both Howard and Nash had to endure extended spells on the sideline with injury. Neither of them were anything close to the products they'd been advertised before the trades, and Metta World Peace regressed pretty hard on the defensive end in the '12-13 season.

Kobe, on the other hand, was still Kobe. By still Kobe, I mean he was better than ever, as evidenced by his efficiency from the midrange - he shot 51% on 2-pointers that year, the highest percentage of his career.

In the 7 games he played before injuring his Achilles against the Warriors in one of the final games of the season (more on that later), Kobe was averaging over 40 minutes per game (highest in the NBA) and had played 7 consecutive quarters without taking a break. He pushed his body once more through all of the pain thresholds and was ultimately instrumental to the Lakers taking the 7th seed in the regular season.

#3 From shooting airballs to becoming the most clutch player in the league

Byron Scott missed the game with a sprained wrist, Robert Horry was ejected for fighting with Utah's Jeff Hornacek, and Shaquille O'Neal fouled out with 1:46 remaining in the fourth quarter. The onus of generating all the offense for the Lakers fell to the rookie Kobe, who shot four airballs at the end of the game.

The Jazz won 98–93 in overtime to eliminate the Lakers 4–1. He first whiffed a game-winning 2-point jump shot in the fourth quarter, and then misfired three three-point field goals in overtime, including two tying shots in the final minute. O'Neal commented that "He was the only guy who had the guts at the time to take shots like that."

O'Neal's words would turn prophetic as Kobe hit game-winning shots or free throws for the Lakers on 36 separate occasions through the years and become NBA GMs' most trusted player to hit a game-winner for 11 straight seasons from 2002 to 2012.

#2 2003-04 NBA season

Los Angeles Lakers v Los Angeles Clippers

The Lakers' 2003-04 season will be remembered for bringing 4 first-ballot Hall of Famers in Kobe, Shaq, Gary Payton and Karl Malone together in a botched attempt at regaining the championship from the Spurs. Much of their regular season campaign was, however, marred by Kobe's off-court troubles.

Kobe was undergoing the investigations of rape charges filed by a 19-year-old hotel employee in Denver, with the incident taking place in July 2003. The legal formalities that kicked off then carried over to the season itself, and he spent a lot of off-court time in shuttling between judicial hearings and Lakers games.

His relationship with wife Vanessa was understandably at an all-time low at that point, but the Mamba was still himself on the basketball court.

#1 Knocking down 2 clutch free throws after an Achilles tear

Golden State Warriors v Los Angeles Lakers

I don't think I can put it more succinctly and effectively than Brian Shaw, a former Laker who sat down with Horace Grant, Devean George and Ron Harper to pen an article for The Players' Tribune a day before the Mamba's retirement on 'How We'll Remember Kobe'.

"He has the highest threshold for pain of anybody I’ve ever met. LeBron got cramps and they carried him off the floor. Paul Pierce hurt his knee and they took him out in a wheelchair. Dwyane Wade got wheeled off after he separated his shoulder."

"Kobe ruptured his Achilles and wouldn’t come out of the game until the trainer let him shoot his two free throws. Then he walked all the way to the locker room. He wasn’t going to let anybody wheel him off."

"That was the most amazing thing about him that I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve seen a lot. If you know what it feels like to have that injury — I mean, the toughness to do that is indescribable."

Horace Grant follows that up with:

"Kobe giving up those two free throws would’ve been like a little kid giving up his ice-cream cone. Forget it."

"His ability to play through injury was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. On those championship teams, he was playing with so many injuries that people didn’t even know about. And he would never complain about it."

And these final few words are what Kobe's NBA career was really all about.

Edited by Raunak J