ATLANTA — At the end of his last minute of professional basketball, Kobe Bryant draped his arms around Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle to keep him from collapsing as much as to celebrate his 60-point sendoff. He gulped for oxygen. He looked flushed and on the verge of collapse.



No sports cliche is more overworked than the notion of a player leaving it all on the court. But in that moment, there was no doubting that Bryant had used up every last second of basketball his body would allow.



That is what the cumulative toll of 57,278 NBA minutes looks like. Or at least, what it’s supposed to.



By the time Bryant played his final game, his body had been decimated by the game he loved. The vast majority of players never even get that far. Only two others in league history, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone, have logged more combined regular-season and playoff minutes than Bryant.



At some point in the coming days, likely in the second half...