“I remember one time we came to the sideline and Mike James, myself and a couple of guys huddled up, and we were talking to Sam Mitchell about, ‘Hey coach, think we might want to double-team that guy? Maybe make someone else beat us. That may help,’” Rose said in a 2012 video for Grantland. “He was playing one-on-one, between the leg, behind the back, for three, to the basket. I just remember realizing at one point in the game, this may be something historic happening right now.”
Mitchell said he gave Morris Peterson the primary assignment against Bryant that night. Mitchell long had an affinity for Peterson, the former Michigan State swingman who Mitchell counts as one of his favorite Raptors.
“I know I got my best guy, my toughest guy and my guy that won’t quit, guarding him,” Mitchell said. “For Kobe to get 81 and Morris Peterson guarding him at some point that game, he had an unbelievable night.”
Peterson had his best season as a pro that year, but was no match for Bryant, who was at the height of his scoring powers. Bryant won the first of his two scoring titles that season, averaging a career-high 35.4 points per game.
When he walked into Staples Center that night for the 41st game of the season, Bryant had already topped 40 points in a game 12 times, 50 three times and scored 62 points in three quarters of a win over Dallas on Dec. 20, 2005.
“It was Kobe Bryant,” Mitchell said in his familiar tone of bemused exasperation. “The thing is, if it was Sam Mitchell that scored 81 points in a game, OK. But we are talking about one of the top 25 players in the history of the NBA.”
As for the assertions by Rose and James that they asked to guard Bryant to try to stem the tide and that the coach stubbornly stuck to a man-to-man approach, Mitchell just chuckles.
“Come on. Jalen was guarding him. He was the starting small forward,” Mitchell said. “It’s my fault, too. That’s just the way it is. I’m OK with it.
“We changed the defense. I would think if a guy was going for 81, whoever raises their hand and says, ‘Coach, let me have him,’ who volunteers, I think you would get that job that night. I don’t think too many guys were volunteering that night.”
But here’s one of the crazier aspects of the night: whatever strategy Mitchell was employing, it was working for the first 30 minutes. The Raptors led by 14 points at halftime and still led by eight with five minutes to play in the third quarter.
By that time, however, Bryant had really built a full head of steam. He had 18 points in the first seven minutes of the third and by the time the period was over, the Lakers led 91-85.
“We’re talking about one of the greatest players to play,” Mitchell said. “He wasn’t talking trash, wasn’t showing us up, was playing his ass off because we were winning the game. His desire to win, he just took that game from us.”
It was another rough night in a season full of them for the Raptors, who finished 27-55 in Mitchell’s second year on the job. They rebounded to win 47 games the next season, earning Mitchell coach of the year honors. He spent four and a quarter seasons in Toronto and later got one season as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves when he was promoted following the passing of Flip Saunders.
That was in 2015-16, Bryant’s final season in the NBA. The superstar was in a reflective mood that season, and the media horde that followed him was constantly asking opponents about their memories of playing against Bryant.
During each of the Timberwolves’ three meetings with the Lakers, asking Mitchell about Bryant’s most famous night as a pro was a natural angle. Sometimes combative with the press during his coaching days, Mitchell never indulged their desires to go down memory lane.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate to take away from what I was trying to do with those young kids,” Mitchell said, referring to young Wolves players Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine. “As a coach, I felt like when you got young players, the conversation shouldn’t be about me. It should be about, am I doing my job? And the conversation should be about the players.”
In their final meeting of the season, Bryant hit the Wolves for 38 points in Los Angeles. Mitchell said after the game that he “hated” Bryant for all of the torment Kobe had inflicted upon him over the years. It was a playful depiction that some took literally.
“I said that out of respect and love and admiration,” Mitchell says now. “Man, I hate him.”
So no, Mitchell will not be watching Bryant’s jersey retirement with disdain. He called Kobe the second-best shooting guard to ever play the game.
A dozen years later, Mitchell will occasionally get asked about that game when fans run into him around town, but he says it’s not as often as one might think. The 54-year-old still hopes to get another chance to be a head coach one day, and he insists that the lessons he learned from that game, and all the others that followed, will help him.
