BOSTON — In a city that genuinely despises its opponents, there have been precious few 21st-century athletes who managed to break through the Teflon outer shell to earn some level of real admiration.

Kobe Bryant embraced being the villain in Boston. He was the killer of dreams, the assassin of hope to Celtics fans for so many years. But there was just something about him that no matter how much Celtics fans said they hated him, they had to begrudgingly respect him.

Perhaps that’s why Bryant had a framed piece of the Garden parquet floor in the center of his home office. It was a gift bestowed on him by Danny Ainge, Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca for his final game in Boston. He had earned it. Nobody excelled on the Celtics’ floor in the biggest moments quite like Bryant.

Bryant died on Sunday in a helicopter crash in southern California. His daughter Gianna, 13, was one of nine people aboard the helicopter. There were no survivors. The group was en route to Gianna’s basketball game.

Bryant revived the dormant Celtics-Lakers rivalry when he went up against the Big 3 of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in the 2000s. For a generation of Celtics fans too young to experience the Showtime Lakers, it was a chance to finally, after nearly two decades, see if the lore lived up to the hype. It’s hard to imagine anyone besides Bryant could have met that incredibly high standard, but he pulled it off. He was always willing to do whatever it took to win. He would get the stop, hit the shot, grab the rebound. When the pressure was highest, he fought against it by trying to do it all.

He had his chance to prove he could win a title outside of the shadow of Shaquille O’Neal in 2008 but fell perilously short. As the Celtics closed out the Lakers in Game 6, Bryant sat on the visitors’ bench in the Garden for the fourth quarter, watching the entire arena celebrate as his team whimpered in a blowout loss.

He would get the chance to avenge that defeat. He would not squander it.

It’s ironic that for someone who never saw a shot he didn’t like, perhaps the most important play of his career was a pass. With just over a minute left in Game 7 of the 2010 Finals against the Celtics, Bryant drove at Allen and saw Ron Artest standing alone at the elbow. He jumped up to pass the ball to Artest, who jab stepped at Pierce before draining a 3 in his face to take a six-point lead. It was the cushion Bryant and the Lakers needed to finally take down the Celtics, marking one of the crowning achievements of his historic career.

“He never passes me the ball, and he passed me the ball!” Artest said after the game, laughing. “Kobe passed me the ball, and I shot a 3!”

A few moments later, Bryant grabbed the loose ball as the buzzer went off and streamers filled the air.

“This is the sweetest,” he told Stuart Scott as he held his last Finals MVP trophy. “We’ve been downplaying the whole series the rivalry between the Lakers and Celtics because we had to focus on what we had to do. But we understood how bad the city wanted it, there is no question about it. This one’s by far the sweetest because it was against them and it was the hardest one by far.”

He admitted that the gravity of the moment was leaking into his psyche, that it was one of the very few things big enough to penetrate the steel trap of emotion that was Bryant’s competitive mind.

“Tonight, it got the best of me. I wanted it so bad,” Bryant said. “Sometimes you want something so bad, it slips away from you. But my guys picked me up.”

After letting it slip through his fingers two years earlier, Bryant had the closure he needed, secure in knowing he vanquished his greatest foe. As LeBron James began his historic prime and Bryant slowly drifted from the top of his game, that final triumph over the Celtics came to define the pinnacle of his career. From the jersey number change and all that had represented to the 2007 trade demand, Bryant had completed the metamorphosis needed to redeem one of the all-time great careers. In so many ways, it couldn’t have happened without the pressure of the Garden and the Celtics pushing back at him.

I remember in a past life as a postgame show host walking out on to the court on Dec. 30, 2015, to tape a segment after Bryant’s final game in Boston. I came across the Bryant family standing on the Celtics logo at half court. Bryant was pointing to the Celtics’ 2008 championship banner, explaining to young Gianna and Natalia how that moment changed his career.

Kobe Bryant and his family say good night to an empty Garden for the last time. #Celtics #Lakers #NBA pic.twitter.com/pR1VyXtz6x — Jared Weiss (@JaredWeissNBA) December 31, 2015

They spent some time taking in the scene that we took for granted as our well-appointed backdrop. For his final moment at the Garden, he wanted to show his family how every nook and cranny of the building was a part of his life’s story.

(Top photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)