The final championship of Kobe Bryant’s career came in 2010, and it was an especially sweet one. He and his Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics in seven games, defending their title and avenging a Finals loss from two years earlier to the Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce-led group.
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That entire Finals was an absolute rock fight, with each team eclipsing 100 points in a game just once. Kobe won his second Finals MVP after averaging 28.6 points, 8.0 rebounds and 3.9 assists through those seven games. In Game 7, though, he needed other guys to step up, as he shot just 6-24 from the floor.
Luckily for the Lakers, others did step up. Ron Artest (as he was known then) drilled a clutch 3 to put the Lakers up 6 with just over a minute to go, and Sasha Vujacic knocked down two free throws with just under 12 seconds left to put the game out of reach.
Derek Fisher had an efficient game with 10 points on 4-6 shooting, but his biggest contribution was in firing the team up with a couple of speeches, one before the game and one during it.
Most of the roster appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the day after winning the title, where it was revealed that Fisher’s words of inspiration helped them overcome a 9-point first-quarter deficit.
“I tried to keep reminding guys that whatever happened in the game so far, we can’t play any worse than we been playing,” Fisher said.
Kobe, who had revealed earlier that Fisher had an even quicker temper than him, cut to the heart of how the veteran’s speech really went. “That’s a very democratic way to say, ‘You guys are playing like a bunch of idiots,'” Kobe said.
Whatever Fisher (or El Presidente, as Vujacic called him) said, it worked, and it helped propel the Lakers to their 16th title, which, at the time, was just one less than the Celtics for the most in NBA history. LeBron James and Anthony Davis would help LA even it up in 2020, but Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown put Boston back on top in 2024.
The two Lakers titles in 2009 and 2010 were monumentally important for Kobe to show that he could win the big one without Shaquille O’Neal as his running mate. Those two pulled off a three-peat from 2000-02, but after Shaq was traded to the Miami Heat in 2004, Kobe went three straight years without getting the Lakers out of the first round.
Kobe and Kimmel were good friends. The Lakers legend appeared on Kimmel’s show 15 times in total, and after his tragic death in 2020, Kimmel dedicated a special tribute episode to him in which he delivered an emotional monologue and called him “a bright light, and that’s how I want to remember him.”
Watching this clip from 2010 shows Kobe in all his glory as the leader of the team, cracking jokes and commanding the room.
