I was in Los Angeles trying to make up for lost time. On a March evening, I hung around the back area of the Staples Center, where the walls are covered floor-to-ceiling with a cherry-colored wood composite, way past the wide, purple-painted cinder-block hallways with purple-uniformed event staff flitting in and out of side doors. The game, against the New York Knicks, had ended twenty minutes before. For the fifty-third time this season, the Lakers had lost. They’ve won only fourteen games. The weather, as usual, was fine. There was a lightness, a buoyancy, that felt strange for a team this bad. Maybe sixteen championship seasons does that. Or perhaps it’s because the players and fans and team employees all know that the team is on sabbatical. Kobe Bryant is retiring, and this season is dedicated to giving him a stage from which the world of basketball can say goodbye.

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