Resting against a railing as he reminisced about that special keepsake moment, Bismack Biyombo thought back to a sequence that’s forever burned into his brain and now also holds a dear place inside his massive 6-foot-9 frame.
When he was with Toronto in 2015 — before his stint in Orlando and second tour of duty in Charlotte — Biyombo had an exchange with Kobe Bryant. It was Bryant’s final season, and his retirement tour stopped north of the American border in Ontario one final time.
“I’ll never forget,” Biyombo said Monday, “I blocked him on one play and he smiled and said, ‘I should’ve pump-faked you. Next one I’m going to pump fake you and we are going to draw a foul.’ And the very next play, he came down the floor, pump-faked me and he got a foul.”
Although Bryant got the best of Biyombo on that particular play, that December night was one of the rare occasions Biyombo’s team emerged victorious against Bryant. It represented just the second head-to-head win in their seven career meetings.
More importantly, it allowed Biyombo to have a hearty chuckle about the whole scenario with Bryant before the Lakers star boarded the team bus and motored out of the city as a player for the final time.
“We were able to laugh and embrace the moment,” Biyombo said. “We got to play his last game in Toronto, and I was there. So it was, ‘What are the odds that I could never, ever be on the floor with Kobe again?’ His last game (of his career four months later), this guy drops 61 (60) points. ‘This is my last game, and I’m going to drop 100 if I can.’ I haven’t seen one player with that mentality. Because he had more shots in that game than when he had 81 points. So that’s the will that this guy has.”
Like many others, Biyombo was emotional upon learning of the deaths of Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others in a helicopter accident just outside Los Angeles on Sunday. Biyombo used to work with the same trainer as Bryant during summers in California, and his mind kept racing about those lives cut short. His phone lit up with messages and inquiries once the news spread, but he was in no mood to talk to anyone, except his brother.
Bryant’s influence was that great, his shadow cast that large of an image over Los Angeles and throughout the league — and world, for that matter. It’s part of the reason there is growing anticipation of how he might be memorialized. That is, if the National Basketball Players Association has anything to say about it.
Biyombo, an NBAPA vice president, said he’s sure the key people in the Players Association’s hierarchy will jump on a conference call soon to mull options and gather ideas. One he wouldn’t mind moving forward: the NBA changing its red, white and blue logo from an outline of Jerry West to Bryant.
“We are hoping,” Biyombo said. “The NBA is going to do something. As a player, I think you want to see that. You just want to see that because of what the guy has meant to the game, to be honest. For me, I think as a player, I would really like to embrace that because you’ve seen the change, and you’ve seen it over the course of the years. Kobe, he wants to teach. As we see now, he opened the academy, and everybody was going to his academy, and the guy was present there early in the morning early to teach. There’s not many people who are doing that.
“(Making him the logo), it’s an appreciation of what the guy has done for the game of basketball, and that’s what I think we all should be thinking about.”
At least one of Biyombo’s teammates agreed. Bryant influenced Miles Bridges. The second-year player watched footage of the five-time NBA Finals champion any chance he got prior to taking the floor in high school and at Michigan State. He’s on board with rebranding the league’s silhouette to Bryant’s likeness.
“Yeah, I think they should make him the logo. I think they should retire 8 and 24 on every team,” Bridges said. “Yeah, I definitely think he should be the logo for sure. You could see the shock around the league when it happened. How many people it affected, players. It affected everybody in the NBA. So I feel like no player has had an impact — besides MJ — on anybody like Kobe. So I feel like he should definitely be the logo.”
Others want to see it happen, too. Biyombo mentioned how two of his former teammates in Toronto — Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan — were close with Bryant. He gave them pointers and constructive critiques regarding their games. It’s the way Bryant operated.
Killer mentality on the basketball court, friendly as could be off of it.
“Kyle got to know Kobe, learn from Kobe,” Biyombo said. “There’s a lot of guys I know that leaned on Kobe their whole careers. I played with DeMar, and DeMar is a good friend of mine. DeMar, his whole career is Kobe. This guy wears nothing but Kobe, plays in Kobe shoes. All the brand-new pairs of Kobe’s, nobody wears them before DeMar. DeMar has to wear them first. So he meant something in this guy’s career, and the guy had a commitment to follow the things that Kobe has done, his work ethic.”
DeRozan’s routine, in fact, influenced Biyombo. So in essence, Bryant indirectly was helping Biyombo.
“In the summertime, DeMar will still get up at 5 o’clock just as Kobe would do,” Biyombo said. “And you show up at the gym and you beat him to the gym, he’s happy. But that is just what Kobe has meant. For me, I used to get up and work out at the same time as everybody. You changed your work ethic because somebody has done it. Somebody does it and shows you that it’s possible. So we all get to work extra hard and come back to the gym because somebody has implemented that into our mindset, which is Kobe.
“And we all are very thankful that we got to play against him, for the people that got to watch him. For some of us that got to maybe know him a little bit, he meant so much to the game, and I don’t think we will take moments for granted. You are appreciative of your family, you live every day as today. So yeah, it’s tough.”
That’s why Biyombo chooses to cherish those great memories from his time with Bryant.
“One of my favorite things he said was, ‘You are going to win a championship; there are other teams that are going to win a championship,’” Biyombo said. “‘You are going to win MVP; there are going to be other players that win MVP. But for you to be able to transform a whole generation and pass something that they are going to pass to generations, that’s legacy.’”
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(Photo of Bismack Biyombo and Kobe Bryant: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images)
