O'Neal Is Convinced

"That's impossible!" Popovich's eyes bulged as he watched Kobe, facing double teams and even triple teams in the fourth quarter, continue to sink one unreasonable shot after another.

This defied basketball logic!

The ironclad law that the more defenders there were, the lower the shooting percentage, seemed to have lost all meaning in front of Kobe.

Sure, superstars were supposed to score 20 or even 30-plus no matter how heavily they were targeted, but Kobe's 21 points in the third quarter and 39 in the second half were a little absurd!

Thirty-nine points in a half! That was the highest-scoring half in NBA playoff history since the league's founding fifty years ago!

The previous record had been held by Charles Barkley! On April 5, 1994, in a playoff game between the Suns and the Warriors, Barkley scored 38 points in the first half!

They had been bludgeoned to death!

Popovich had thought the Spurs had victory in the bag, holding an overwhelming advantage, only for Kobe to bludgeon them to death with one superstar shot after another!

Though Popovich was a rookie coach, he had played professionally too! This was simply ridiculous—there was actually a way to win like this?

Why not just give you four elite defenders, let you chuck all game by yourself, and see whether you could put up a 40-plus scoring average like Wilt Chamberlain?

Duncan wore a rare, teeth-gritted expression!

With Duncan right in front of him, Kobe tossed the ball skyward with a circus-like move one second before Duncan could complete the block.

The basketball spun through the air, slipped past Duncan's huge hand, kissed the backboard, and dropped through the net!

"What a shame. If you'd been just a little faster, you'd have stopped me." Kobe spread his hands and shrugged.

David Robinson