Warriors-Lakers was one of the greatest games I've ever seen

(Illustration courtesy of Largetosti)

Somewhere in my house is box of VHS tapes. It's buried under a mountain of other objects and it's too much of a hassle to dig them out, and even more of a hassle to actually watch them. But they're there. God knows if I'll watch any of them again, but they're there, and that's what's important. Those tapes contains hours and hours of basketball games that I studiously recorded when I was little, and like any good collection, I preserved only the greatest games -- the overtime thrillers, the last-second buzzer-beaters, the improbable upsets.

Last night's Lakers-Warriors game was none of those things, but it was without a doubt the best non-postseason NBA game I'd seen in a decade, and it'd be prominently featured in my games collection if I still managed it.

This game had stakes. You could design the greatest NBA game ever, with half-court shots and game-winners and it could go six overtimes, but if it's a meaningless game, it ultimately doesn't amount to much. It's like a Michael Bay movie: the things you're seeing on screen could be really, really cool, but since the characters are basically Abercrombie & Fitch manikins placed in front of screaming robots and falling buildings, you don't care what happens to them. Warriors-Lakers, on the other hand, meant the world to both teams. The Warriors needed a win to keep their standing in the Western Conference; a win would keep them on pace to play a hobbled Nuggets team in the first round, and a loss would drop them in the standings, projecting them to play either the Spurs or Thunder, two teams they struggle mightily against. The Lakers, meanwhile, had their whole season riding on this game. Tied in the loss column with the Jazz, the Lakers could only get into the playoffs if they won more of their final two games than Utah. A loss would put the Lakers a game behind Utah, with Utah holding the tie-breaker, with only two games left -- the odds of the Jazz losing their last two games and the Lakers winning their last two games was microscopic. For all intents and purposes, this game was the season for the Lakers.

The game was a nail-biter in the third quarter, when Kobe Bryant landed awkwardly on his knee. There was a palpable silence from the home Lakers crowd as Kobe, after a timeout, went to the line to shoot two free-throws and then remained in the game. Kobe, in his 17th year, hadn't come out of the game at all, and had rested just 14 minutes over the course of the last six games. And now he was moving like a 50-year-old; on defense, it was all he could do to make it to the other end of the court. But he stayed in the game and somehow managed to finish out the third quarter. And it was terrifying. Watching Kobe instantly brought back memories of Robert Griffin III, who came back when he shouldn't have in a playoff game and wound up wrecking his knee. You knew what Kobe was doing was insane; the crowd knew it too. Even as I watched it, even before what happened in the final minutes of the game, I felt like I was watching the death procession of Kobe Bryant. It was almost a foregone conclusion that something terrible was going to happen to him.

And to that end, there wasn't a doubt in my mind the Warriors were going to win. As the Lakers fell behind by nine points, it didn't seem possible that they could overcome the deficit with Kobe in the shape he was in. I was wrong. Kobe hit back-to-back three's at the top of the key to tie the game at 107 -- two of the more impressive three's I'd seen in a while. The second one in particular must have been from 30 feet away. He resorted to taking them because he almost couldn't move. He didn't have the quickness to get by the defender, and the last two times he had driven into the lane, his lack of mobility gave way and he missed the lay-up both times. Those flat-footed, insane three's would have been impressive under normal circumstances, but do it in that big of a game, with an injury that bad, was nothing short of amazing.

It looked like Kobe had found his second wind. Even though he was still moving like he had been shot in the shin, he seemed able to function well enough. But then reality crept in. Kobe fell down after driving on Harrison Barnes and stayed on the floor for an extended length of time. A timeout was called and when Kobe went to the line, he could barely walk. He sank his two free-throws, but the Lakers had to foul to get him out of the game.

There was something poetic about what happened to Kobe Bryant, who suffered an Achilles injury on the final play. Kobe cared so much about making this disastrous season mean something, and Mike D'Antoni -- probably realizing that he's going to get fired anyway if the Lakers miss the playoffs -- was perfectly willing to let Kobe self-destruct on the court. And sure enough, Kobe gave the Lakers everything his battered, injury-ridden body could handle. He had hit game-winning shots, he had played in every available minute, and yet it was all so he could be in the locker room while his team closed out the three most important minutes of the season without him.

Normally, I loathe the usage of words like "heroic" and "noble" and "gallant" when it comes to sports. I think pundits overuse those platitudes. But goddamn it, what Kobe did out there was actually heroic. He really did sacrifice his body for the team, and even though his actions probably had nothing to do with how they played over the final three minutes, I'm comfortable believing that the Lakers were either motivated or inspired to win when Kobe went down. I want to believe that they won that game for him -- which they barely won, since Stephen Curry nearly hit a 75-foot three as time expired -- to show that his effort hadn't been in vain.

Of course, it will have been in vain whether they make the playoffs or not. The Lakers can't possibly go far in the playoffs without Kobe (who's now assuredly out for the season), not that they had much of a chance of upsetting San Antonio or Oklahoma City anyway. The same goes for the Warriors, who are too new to this stage to possibly win more than a single round in the postseason. In the grand scheme of things, this game was little more than a showdown between two lower-tier teams trying to claw their way into the postseason. But it meant enough that Kobe Bryant was willing to wreck his season to complete it, and that alone elevates the Lakers' 118-116 victory over every other regular season game I've seen in a very, very long time.