Going into Game 6 of the 2009 Western Conference Finals, the LA Lakers had already put themselves in a position to take the series home with a 103-94 win in Game 5.
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The late Kobe Bryant could almost sniff a win even before Game 6 began, and he was more than happy to bury the Denver Nuggets in an avalanche of his greatness on the night. And so he scored 35 points from 12 of 20 FGs, 2 of 4 three-pointers and 9 of 9 FTs, and he complemented them with 10 assists, 6 rebounds, 1 turnover and a block.
The Lakers won 119-92, and Kobe would go on to bag the first of two consecutive Finals MVP awards. But a little something else would also happen that night, which would immortalize the Black Mamba in popular culture. He would get a call from the rapper Lil Wayne, who would go on to rave about how the performance had inspired him to pen a song.
In a 2019 conversation on The Corp podcast with Alex Rodriguez and Dan Katz, Bryant explained that, at first, he didn’t really think much of it. “After the Denver series, [Wayne] called me. He was like, ‘Man, that performance just motivated the hell out of me.’ I think it was like Game 6,” Kobe tried to recall.
“[Wayne] was like, ’Imma do a song. Is it okay? Can I do a song?’ I was like, ‘Alright, cool,'” replied Kobe. “I just thought he was BS-ing or whatever. Before the Celtics series, he sends me the song, and I was like, ‘Oh, you were serious. Okay, that’s awesome,’” he added, still pleasantly surprised.
Much to the hosts’ amusement, Bryant admitted to being a really big fan of the song. “Every day in the car, I listen to it. It hypes me up,” he confessed with a smile!
Notably, Wayne didn’t just write about the ’09 performance; he brought back the nostalgia with the Black Mamba’s sensational 81-point game from 2006 as well. While Kobe found an entire song about him surprising, it wasn’t the first time Weezy dedicated lyrics to him. The Lakers legend had earlier been mentioned in ‘Young Playa’ and ‘Dough is What I Got.’
Not surprisingly, Kobe would go on to feature prominently across American entertainment over the next decade.
Inspired by Harry Potter, Bryant created a children’s book series that became a New York Times bestseller. His poem, ‘Dear Basketball,’ would morph into an Oscar-winning animated short, and the ‘Mamba Mentality’ would trend, even becoming the basis of a book — The Mamba Mentality: How I Play — a modern day carpe diem as far as inspirational words go.
Not only was he a basketball icon, but his affinity for music, literature and fashion made Kobe a cultural icon as well. It’s probably why his untimely demise still stings; not because of what he had already achieved, but because of what he could have.
