Kobe: 4-time All-Star MVP rules game once again

If it sounds like a lot to process, it’s only because it was difficult to envision before watching it unfold in real time. The target score was very easy to understand live.

Team LeBron won the first quarter, Team Giannis won the second, and the third quarter ended as a tie. It was a perfect ending: That charitable donation got folded into the final period.

Team LeBron ultimately raised $400,000 for the Chicago Scholars. Team Giannis’ efforts sent a $100,000 check to After School Matters.

The game was a win for everyone involved. That’s something the league can hang on to, especially if this is what we’ll see in the future.

CHICAGO — It has become one of the NBA’s most revered traditions: On the morning of the NBA All-Star Game, the league pays tribute to retired players with what is called the Legends Brunch. It brings together about 3,000 guests, and every year a recent retiree with ties to the game’s host city is honored.

When the game was in Los Angeles two years ago, the NBA wanted to honor Kobe Bryant.

He declined. He couldn’t attend. His reason: his daughter Gianna Bryant had a game that morning.

“That said, to us, everything about his priorities,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Sunday as he recalled that conversation with Bryant.

This All-Star weekend was Michael Jordan’s longtime home of Chicago, highlighted by a game where LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo served as captains — but it was, predictably and understandably, overshadowed by the mourning of Bryant.

Jennifer Hudson, wearing the Lakers’ deep purple, performed a pregame tribute to Bryant and sang “For All We Know.“Players on James’ team wore Gianna’s No. 2 on their jerseys and players on Antetokounmpo’s team wore Kobe’s No. 24 on theirs. And all players wore a patch with nine stars, one for each victim of the crash.

Common, in his pregame tribute to Chicago, also paid homage to Bryant, saying that “even in the darkest times, you’ll feel Kobe’s light.“

Everyone at the All-Star Game on Sunday got a 24-page tribute published by Sports Illustrated devoted to Bryant’s career. On the last page of text, just before the back cover, was a quote from Jordan: “I loved Kobe — he was like a little brother to me,“it began. Next to that quote was a photo, Bryant guarding Jordan in 1997, sticking his tongue out much in the same way that the Bulls’ guard often did.

And when the night was over, someone was going to be the first recipient of the Kobe Bryant MVP Award, given to the player voted as the biggest star of the All-Star Game — a trophy that Bryant hoisted four times.

It’s been three weeks now since Bryant, 13-year-old Gianna and seven others were killed in a helicopter crash in Southern California.

And the mourning period is still very active, very real, very necessary.

Magic Johnson — like Bryant, a Lakers legend — had been hired two years ago to introduce Bryant at the Legends Brunch, the one that Bryant couldn’t attend because his daughter had a game that morning.

On Sunday, Johnson finally got his chance to speak at the event and pay tribute to Bryant.