Kobe Bryant will not participate in Rio 2016

Out of respect, it was assumed that Kobe would be given a spot, but possibly at the detriment of the team by excluding a younger player for an aging Bryant.

The Lakers now sit 15th in the Western Conference, so with the playoffs all-but out of the question, Bryant’s final game will likely be in Los Angeles on April 13.

With this announcement, Kobe has now ruled out playing overseas as well as in the Olympics, so there is no doubt that when Kobe hangs it up for the Lakers, he truly is done playing basketball for good.

The pregame press conference, the introductions, and the excitement from the crowd every time Kobe Bryant touched the basketball on Saturday night against the Utah Jazz.

According Basketball-Refrence.com, he has two Gold Medals, won in 2008 and 2012. His availability, like Bryant’s, for Sunday’s home game against Houston was not known. Utah ground out a win by holding the Lakers to a season-low 74 points on just 32.6 percent shooting. Fans have celebrated him on the road – they even cheered for him wildly in Boston, with Celtics fans giving the longtime Laker rival a long, warm salute – and he is nearly certain to be the leading vote-getter for the NBA All-Star Game in Toronto next month.

He also said he was looking forward to having his final professional game be in a Lakers uniform.

On Thursday, Lakers coach Byron Scott said that trainer Gary Vitti wanted to shut Bryant down for one or two weeks to get the Achilles pain under control.

The saying is actually Kobe paraphrasing his own quote from after the end of last season, when he said, “Friends come and go, but banners hang forever”.