Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Look at Kobe Bryant's Road Trip into NBA History

NBA Senior Writer Kevin Ding followed the Los Angeles Lakers on their three-game trip to San Antonio, Minnesota and Indiana for three very different results.

Here's a peek at what happened on and off the court during the trip…

SAN ANTONIO

It's Friday night, and video crews from NBA Entertainment, the Lakers' Time Warner Cable SportsNet network and Showtime (filming Kobe Bryant's Muse documentary) are all jamming into the Lakers' training room.

The small area is set aside for player medical treatment and maintenance. It's adjacent to the regular locker room, and the door usually stays closed for privacy. In some older arenas without proper training rooms, Lakers trainer Gary Vitti will settle for curtains or partitions—and when he really has nothing to work with, he'll even create makeshift separation by sticking lines of athletic tape on the carpet to convey to folks like us in the media to keep out.

But in special cases for special people, such as team photographers or league-sanctioned personnel (or Bryant's celebrity acquaintances such as Barry Bonds back in the day or Novak Djokovic more recently), access is allowed.

On this night, Bryant is threatening to pass Michael Jordan for third on the NBA's all-time scoring list. With 30 points separating them, all the directors and producers need poetic calm-before-the-storm footage if Kobe passes Michael against the San Antonio Spurs.

The footage they collect in the training room?

Kobe cutting his fingernails.

Whether he leaves a hangnail or doesn't file well, he shoots poorly—but his teammates are brilliant. And the Spurs are "pitiful," as Gregg Popovich puts it later, besides resting Kawhi Leonard's sore hand.

Does the Lakers' sharpness have something to do with Bryant scrimmaging hard and talking trash in practice the day before? Of course. Is it Bryant's specific design? Not really, but generally speaking he is very willing to put stress on a situation to test it.

In this case, his teammates also know there is plenty of focus on them in an ESPN game against the NBA champions with Bryant nearing Jordan. And they are on point.

D. Clarke Evans/Getty Images

It turns into the Lakers' best game of a depressing season. They win in overtime not on a Bryant shot, but on a Nick Young three. It was Young who actually initiated all the jaw-jacking with Bryant the day before—although Young's bench unit lost the scrimmage to Bryant's starters.

And same as in the 2013-14 season finale, which the Lakers also won in San Antonio after Bryant had ditched the dead-end team to celebrate his wedding anniversary in Paris, Young is the straw that stirs a bad drink into something surprisingly refreshing.

Young is honest in the locker room afterward about his approach to this game: He was ready to maximize his chances because he figured his idol Kobe would be taking a really big windup to blow a fastball by Michael.   

"No offense to Kobe," Young says chirpily, looking back. "I didn't think I was gonna get the ball that much!"

Young's uninhibited joy fills the locker room as he brings teammates into his interviews with reporters. And, yes, the swag is real: Young steals Bryant's spotlight and struts all over it.

"Let him have a day off," Young says of Bryant. "'Take a break, little man. You kinda tired.' "

MINNEAPOLIS

Young's big shot leads Byron Scott to give the team the day off Saturday. The Lakers had been scheduled to stay over to practice in San Antonio instead of going ahead with a late-night postgame flight to the next city, as is customary. Scott either loves Tex-Mex food or hates the cold.

Practice would've been at a local San Antonio rec center the Lakers have used before. Practices in public places on the road—often the home team's practice court is unavailable or not in close proximity—are some of the more curious days in an NBA season.

Particularly when the Lakers were on top of the basketball world, they were like rock stars descending on health clubs or small college gyms. (Check out, for example, the reactions of some students spying on Lakers practice in 2010 at Boston's Emerson College—and gawking at Andrew Bynum, saying: "He's so tall! Look at that. He's so tall.")

Even now that they're close to the bottom of the standings, the Lakers remain relevant largely because of Bryant.

The Lakers' longtime brand matters, of course, but Bryant's stature today matters more. With him on the team, they haven't had to know the feeling of trivial games in dead arenas. Put simply, they knew better than anyone in the marketplace what they were buying when they sent that much talked-about two-year, $48.5 million contract offer to Bryant.

It's Sunday night, and the 7-16 Lakers against the 5-17 Minnesota Timberwolves might otherwise feel like Sacramento Kings-Utah Jazz or Milwaukee Bucks-Detroit Pistons—but Bryant is here and set to do something special.

The Timberwolves drew 10,337 Wednesday night against then-17-4 Portland. They drew 13,557 on Friday night for Oklahoma City with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

They draw 15,008 on Sunday night against the Lakers.

Bryant's Jordan-passing second-quarter free throws may not have been as dramatic to certain fans as watching second-year 6'11" T-wolves center Gorgui Dieng come off the court just before introductions to use the public restroom slightly closer than the locker room, but watching Bryant pass Jordan on the all-time scoring list resonates in a meaningful way. Even veteran players who have reason to be a little jaded about December regular-season basketball bask in it.

Lakers guard Ronnie Price, who is with his sixth different team in his 10th year in the league, captured the feeling after:

"I'm used to watching these moments when I was a kid, watching NBA [Hardwood] Classics, seeing all of the great things that all of the guys did ahead of us. Now to be actually on the court and affiliated with one of those moments is something that I'll never forget. It's something me and my family—my kids and my kids' kids—can enjoy. To be a part of his history, to be a part of NBA history, is kind of a goose-bump feeling."

Price has four steals to help the cause, but it's Bryant this time who cuts in front of Young on a broken play to get the ball and hit a tiebreaking three-pointer with 1:02 left. The Lakers win again.

The NBA Entertainment video crew, which resorted to interviewing me about Bryant and Jordan pregame in lieu of Bryant toenail footage, gets to head home with the torch passed and Bryant's postgame press conference a veritable retrospective on his career.

Yet in the same way that the best wedding photos are the private, almost stolen moments rather than the staged and smiled creations, the realest reality TV moment of Bryant's big night is captured by Lakers new media manager Ty Nowell (who later brings fans onto the team plane via his Vine of the flight attendants presenting a smiling Bryant with a congratulations cake).

Nowell's Vine of Bryant right after the final horn ends with a candid moment, right before Bryant goes on camera for his postgame interview with TWC SportsNet sideline reporter Mike Trudell. Bryant looks Trudell up and down, nods and tells him just like a regular bro: "Nice suit."

It's that little stuff that usually happens on the real-life road…when no one is chasing the ghost of Jordan.

INDIANAPOLIS

No one can peek into Vitti's training room before the Lakers look to extend a rare winning streak Monday night, even though the double doors have small glass windows. There is paper taped up over the glass.

But after Bryant exorcised the ghost of Jordan the previous night, almost no one is trying to look in and see how he is getting his heavy-mileage body ready for a third game in four nights.

It's the same training room where Vitti got Bryant's severely sprained left ankle ready for his first virtuoso NBA Finals act: winning Game 4 over Reggie Miller's Pacers en route to Bryant's first championship in 2000.

Fourteen years later, Bryant isn't injured, but his body sure doesn't bounce back the way it did then. He misses nine of his first 10 shots, often short, and his teammates aren't much better.

The Lakers miss an astounding 36 of 41 shots to start the game (12.1 percent shooting) and fall behind, 60-21. This time, it's the Pacers who are on point as they try to snap an eight-game losing streak. And as this game will show, the course of an NBA game often comes down simply to one team trying a lot harder than the other.

Bryant gives all the folks in No. 24 Lakers jerseys on hand a little excitement in the third quarter by pushing his body into any and all activity. He junks up the game with manic, wild energy at both ends. He gets a couple of steals. He throws down a shocking dunk. He takes some bad shots and bad fouls. But he gets the team to make plays and gain a little ground.

Bryant scores 14 points in the quarter and crashes into the scorer's table trying to reach a loose ball in the final second. Then he sits out the fourth quarter of Indiana's 110-91 victory, leaving his shooting line at an atrocious 8 of 26. Postgame, he is not dismayed.

After this trip began with all that talk about Bryant using practice to carry a theme over to the game, he is using a game to carry a theme over to the next practice.

"In the second half, we learned a lot," he says. "We learned what it feels like to play that hard on defense. You have to get after it. It helps to know what that feels like."

Three days after the Lakers' best victory, one day after Bryant makes history, his team is humiliated. Still, he offers the same prognosis after each game:

Progress was made.

And he's happy to be heading home. The Lakers don't play again till Friday.

"That time off," he says, "will be much, much appreciated."

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.