但现在他不再是一名主教练，而是特纳体育的全职分析师，在那个晚上在NBA电视台上转播湖人队对阵金州勇士队的比赛和半场致敬布莱恩特的颁奖典礼中，米切尔终于准备好谈论那个前宿命的夜晚。
“你在看的时候从来没有想过，我从来没有想过他会得到81分，”在与The Athletic节目对话时，米切尔笑着答道，“我知道他会有一场精彩的比赛，但我从来没有想过他会得到81分。”
他不是唯一的一个。
“甚至在我的梦里都没有发生过。”布莱恩特在比赛结束后说，“这一切就这样发生了。这很难解释。这只是那些事其中之一。”
看着那晚的数据统计表，看到布莱恩特那行末端的81分时，真的难以置信。
这是联盟历史上单场得分第二高的比赛，当然在威尔特·张伯伦在1962年传奇的100分之后。大卫·罗宾逊在1994的马刺对快船的71分比赛是在过去四十年里最接近科比的一次。
（ps.大家也别忘了布克哦）
“我总是说，如果科比得到81分，我们会赢得比赛，因为这会被认为是自私的。”米切尔说，“令人惊讶的是，自私是多么美妙。”
看着它在现实中一步步展开时，米切尔只能把双手放在头上，束手无策地目睹着这一切的发生。
“我正试图找出如何阻止它的办法，”米切尔说道，当布莱恩特接管比赛时，他脑子里在想什么。我对自己说，“你知道什么？他是怎么做到这一点的？”
“我们让他开始运球，他假装启动，然后来了一个360度转身跳投，全进了！我坐在这里，双手放在头顶上，防守队员还能做什么呢？”
“这就是问题所在，”米切尔说。“你可能会感到心烦意乱，那是科比·布莱恩特。如果你看看那天晚上的他和他难以置信地投篮，那真是难以置信！”
在随后的几年里，布莱恩特因其出色的得分之夜而备受赞誉，米切尔因无法限制他而受到嘲笑。
当天晚上湖人队首发阵容中有布莱恩特、拉玛尔·奥多姆、斯马什·帕克、克里斯·米姆和夸梅·布朗。在比赛中其他八名至少出场了八分钟的球员共计42投14中（33%命中率），但布莱恩特一直保持高效。
杰伦·罗斯和麦克·詹姆斯是猛龙队这场比赛中的两个经验丰富的人，此前曾批评米切尔在比赛中不愿意作出改变。
“我记得有一次，我们来到边线，麦克·詹姆斯，我自己和几个家伙挤成一团，我们跟萨姆·米切尔谈，‘嘿，教练，我想我们要不要包夹他？也许会让其他人得到空位的机会，但这可能会有帮助，”罗斯在个视频中对Grantland说道。“他在打一对一，胯下运球，背后运球，三分出手，球进。我只记得在比赛中意识到了一点，这可能是一件历史性的事情。”
米切尔说那天晚上他给莫里斯·皮特森的首要任务就是对位布莱恩特。米切尔长期以来对彼得森——前密歇根州摇摆人，米切尔认为是他最喜欢的猛龙球员之一，都很有亲和力。
“我知道我们队内最好的球员，最坚韧的家伙将不会退缩，防住他，”米切尔说。“在科比拿下81分的比赛中，有一些分数正是在对位彼得森时取得的，他度过了一个难以置信的夜晚。”
彼得森在那年是他职业生涯中最好的一个赛季，但在科比的得分能力面前，他却显得那么黯然失色。布莱恩特在那个赛季以职业生涯新高的场均35.4分，赢得了他两个得分王中的第一个。
那天晚上在斯台普斯球馆的比赛是他本赛季的第41场比赛，此前，布莱恩特已经12次得分40+，3次50+，并在12月20日赢下达拉斯的比赛中，三节得到62分。
“那可是科比·布莱恩特，”米切尔用他那熟悉的恼怒的语气说。“问题是，如果是萨姆·米切尔在比赛中得了81分，那就好了。但我们谈论的是NBA历史上25大球员之一。”
至于罗斯和詹姆斯的主张，他们要求防守布莱恩特试图阻止他，教练固执地坚持盯人防守，米切尔只是抿着嘴笑。
“行吧，杰伦在防守他，他是首发小前锋，”米切尔说。“这也是我的错，事情就是这样，我很好。”
“我们改变了防守策略。我想，如果一个人要得81分，谁举起手说‘教练，让我防他。’谁自愿，我想当晚你会得到那份工作。但我不认为那天晚上有太多人会愿意这么做。”
但这是那晚最疯狂的一个方面：无论米切尔采用什么策略，它都只在前30分钟有效。猛龙队在中场休息时领先14分，在第三节还有五分钟时仍领先八分。
然而，到那时，布莱恩特真的激起了满脑的斗志。他在第三节的前七分钟里得了18分，在比赛结束的时候，湖人队以91-85领先。
米切尔说：“我们谈论的是最伟大的球员之一。”“他不是在说垃圾话，不是在羞辱我们，而是因为我们将要赢下这场比赛。他渴望获胜，他只是从我们手里接管了比赛。”
这是赛季里另一个艰难的夜晚，对于猛龙队来说，在米切尔工作的第二年以27胜55负的战绩结束。下赛季他们反弹，赢得了47场比赛，也让米切尔获得年度最佳教练奖。他在多伦多度过了四又四分之一个赛季，后来他在明尼苏达森林狼队作为主教练度过了一个赛季，当他接替了去世的菲利普·桑德斯，担任临时主帅。
那是在-16赛季，布莱恩特在NBA的最后一个赛季。那个超级巨星在那个赛季里表现出一种反省的情绪，跟随他的媒体们不断地向对手询问他们和布莱恩特比赛的记忆。
在森林狼和湖人三次交手中的每一次，问米切尔关于布莱恩特最著名的生涯之夜，作为专业人士是一个很自然的观点。他在执教的时候经常会与媒体争论，但米切尔不会为了迎合记者们而钻进令人难堪的回忆里。
米切尔说：“我不认为夺走过去我和年轻人们的努力是合适的。”他指的是年轻的森林狼球员卡尔·安东尼·唐斯、安德鲁·威金斯和扎克·拉文。“作为一名教练，我觉得当你拥有年轻球员的时候，谈话不应该都是关于我的。应该是，我的工作做得足够好吗？谈话应该是关于球员的。”
在-18赛季的最后一次交手中，布莱恩特在洛杉矶得到38分并击败了森林狼。米切尔在比赛结束后说，他“憎恨”布莱恩特，因为科比多年来一直折磨他。这是一个调侃的描述，但一些人仍以字面意思来曲解他的本意。
“我这样说是出于尊敬、爱戴和钦佩，”米切尔说。“伙计，我恨他。”
所以，米切尔非常重视布莱恩特的球衣退役。他称科比是历史第二好的得分后卫。
十几年后，当球迷们在镇上遇到他时，米切尔偶尔会被问及那场比赛，但他说这并不像人们想象的那么频繁。这位54岁的伙计仍然希望有一天能有机会成为一名主教练，他坚持认为他从那场比赛中吸取的教训，以及接下来的一切都会帮助他。
“下一次我会是一个更好的教练，我会是一个更好的人，”米切尔说。“所以当我回顾所有这些事情，科比·布莱恩特的81分，这是如何发生的，以及我得到的批评，这些使我成长，成为一个真正的教练，一个真正的男人。”
原文：
Sam Mitchell reflects on Kobe’s 81: ‘I don’t think too many were volunteering to guard him that night’
Jon Krawczynski
When Kobe Bryant looks up into the rafters at Staples Center on Monday night, a curtain will drop to unveil the Nos. 8 and 24, the two jerseys he wore during an epic 20-year run with the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers may as well retire 81, too.
As much as Bryant has been defined by the numbers 8, 24 and 5 (championships), it can be argued that the first number most think about when they hear the name Kobe is 81. His point total against the Toronto Raptors on Jan. 22, is widely viewed as the modern-day scoring record, the post-Wilt benchmark.
In some ways, 81 has followed Sam Mitchell’s career as well.
Mitchell was the coach on the opposite bench when Bryant made 28 of 46 shots and 18 of 20 free throws to rally the Lakers to a 122-104 win that night. For years, Mitchell was asked about being at the bottom of the mountain when the avalanche comes. For years, he resisted going down that road.
But now that he is no longer an active head coach and is a full-time analyst for Turner Sports, which will be televising the Lakers game against the Golden State Warriors and the halftime ceremony honoring Bryant on Monday night on NBA TV, Mitchell is finally ready to talk about that fateful night nearly 12 years ago.
“Never when you were watching it are you thinking, it never crossed my mind he was going to get 81,” Mitchell said with a chuckle in a telephone conversation with The Athletic. “I knew he was having a great game, but it never crossed my mind he was going to get 81.”
He wasn’t the only one.
“Not even in my dreams,” Bryant said after the game. “That was something that just happened. It’s tough to explain. It’s just one of those things.”
Looking at the box score from that night and seeing the 81 at the end of Bryant’s line is difficult to grasp.
It’s the second-highest single-game total in league history, of course behind Wilt Chamberlain’s legendary 100 in 1962. David Robinson’s 71-point game for the Spurs against the Clippers in 1994 was the only time a player has gotten within 10 points of Bryant’s binge in the last four decades.
“I always said, if Kobe would’ve had 81 and we would’ve won the game, he would’ve been called selfish,” Mitchell said. “So it’s amazing how fine a line selfishness is.”
Watching it unfold in real time, all Mitchell could do was throw his hands in the air.
“I’m trying to figure out how to stop it,” Mitchell said of what was going through his head as Bryant took over. “I’m saying to myself, ‘What the you-know-what? How is he doing this?’
“We made him pick his dribble up, he pump-faked and then does a 360-fade-away-jump shot. All net. And I’m sitting here with my hands on top of my head like what else can a defender do?”
“That’s the thing about it,” Mitchell said. “As upsetting as you may want to feel, it was Kobe Bryant. If you look at that night and the shots that he made, it was unbelievable.”
In the years that followed, Bryant was lionized for his remarkable scoring night and Mitchell was pilloried for his inability to contain him.
Accompanying Bryant in the Lakers starting lineup that night were Lamar Odom, Smush Parker, Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown. The other eight players who logged at least eight minutes in the game shot a combined 14 for 42 (33 percent), yet Bryant kept getting free.
Jalen Rose and Mike James, two veterans for the Raptors in that game, have previously criticized Mitchell’s perceived unwillingness to change things up during the game.
“I remember one time we came to the sideline and Mike James, myself and a couple of guys huddled up, and we were talking to Sam Mitchell about, ‘Hey coach, think we might want to double-team that guy? Maybe make someone else beat us. That may help,’” Rose said in a video for Grantland. “He was playing one-on-one, between the leg, behind the back, for three, to the basket. I just remember realizing at one point in the game, this may be something historic happening right now.”
Mitchell said he gave Morris Peterson the primary assignment against Bryant that night. Mitchell long had an affinity for Peterson, the former Michigan State swingman who Mitchell counts as one of his favorite Raptors.
“I know I got my best guy, my toughest guy and my guy that won’t quit, guarding him,” Mitchell said. “For Kobe to get 81 and Morris Peterson guarding him at some point that game, he had an unbelievable night.”
Peterson had his best season as a pro that year, but was no match for Bryant, who was at the height of his scoring powers. Bryant won the first of his two scoring titles that season, averaging a career-high 35.4 points per game.
When he walked into Staples Center that night for the 41st game of the season, Bryant had already topped 40 points in a game 12 times, 50 three times and scored 62 points in three quarters of a win over Dallas on Dec. 20, .
“It was Kobe Bryant,” Mitchell said in his familiar tone of bemused exasperation. “The thing is, if it was Sam Mitchell that scored 81 points in a game, OK. But we are talking about one of the top 25 players in the history of the NBA.”
As for the assertions by Rose and James that they asked to guard Bryant to try to stem the tide and that the coach stubbornly stuck to a man-to-man approach, Mitchell just chuckles.
“Come on. Jalen was guarding him. He was the starting small forward,” Mitchell said. “It’s my fault, too. That’s just the way it is. I’m OK with it.
“We changed the defense. I would think if a guy was going for 81, whoever raises their hand and says, ‘Coach, let me have him,’ who volunteers, I think you would get that job that night. I don’t think too many guys were volunteering that night.”
But here’s one of the crazier aspects of the night: whatever strategy Mitchell was employing, it was working for the first 30 minutes. The Raptors led by 14 points at halftime and still led by eight with five minutes to play in the third quarter.
By that time, however, Bryant had really built a full head of steam. He had 18 points in the first seven minutes of the third and by the time the period was over, the Lakers led 91-85.
“We’re talking about one of the greatest players to play,” Mitchell said. “He wasn’t talking trash, wasn’t showing us up, was playing his ass off because we were winning the game. His desire to win, he just took that game from us.”
It was another rough night in a season full of them for the Raptors, who finished 27-55 in Mitchell’s second year on the job. They rebounded to win 47 games the next season, earning Mitchell coach of the year honors. He spent four and a quarter seasons in Toronto and later got one season as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves when he was promoted following the passing of Flip Saunders.
That was in -16, Bryant’s final season in the NBA. The superstar was in a reflective mood that season, and the media horde that followed him was constantly asking opponents about their memories of playing against Bryant.
During each of the Timberwolves’ three meetings with the Lakers, asking Mitchell about Bryant’s most famous night as a pro was a natural angle. Sometimes combative with the press during his coaching days, Mitchell never indulged their desires to go down memory lane.
“I didn’t think it was appropriate to take away from what I was trying to do with those young kids,” Mitchell said, referring to young Wolves players Karl-Anthony Towns, Andrew Wiggins and Zach LaVine. “As a coach, I felt like when you got young players, the conversation shouldn’t be about me. It should be about, am I doing my job? And the conversation should be about the players.”
In their final meeting of the season, Bryant hit the Wolves for 38 points in Los Angeles. Mitchell said after the game that he “hated” Bryant for all of the torment Kobe had inflicted upon him over the years. It was a playful depiction that some took literally.
“I said that out of respect and love and admiration,” Mitchell says now. “Man, I hate him.”
So no, Mitchell will not be watching Bryant’s jersey retirement with disdain. He called Kobe the second-best shooting guard to ever play the game.
A dozen years later, Mitchell will occasionally get asked about that game when fans run into him around town, but he says it’s not as often as one might think. The 54-year-old still hopes to get another chance to be a head coach one day, and he insists that the lessons he learned from that game, and all the others that followed, will help him.
“I’m a better coach for the next time and I’m a better person for it,” Mitchell said. “So when I look back on all this stuff, and Kobe Bryant’s 81 and how that happened and the criticism I got, it just made me grow as a coach and as a man.”
文章来源：湖人国度官网/官方微博：@湖人国度官网/6541985240/profile?rightmod=1 wvr=6 mod=personnumber is_all=1公众号：湖社
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