Kobe Bryant’s final game got bumped.

It’s almost inconceivable that this happened, but here we are. The scheduling gods have looked down upon Bryant and decided to laugh.

Bryant’s last game will take place on Wednesday night against the Utah Jazz at 10:30 p.m. ET, the exact moment of the tip-off between the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies. The Warriors will be going for their 73rd win of the season, which would break what many believed to be an unbreakable 72-win record set by Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and the rest of the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls.

Faced with a tough decision, ESPN decided to go with current greatness as opposed to celebrating past greatness. They bumped Bryant’s final game, opting to televise the Warriors game on ESPN instead.

… But don’t worry. Bryant’s game will be on ESPN2.

It’s the right decision, albeit one that’s mostly symbolic. (Who has ESPN and not ESPN2?) Bryant’s last game is important, and his career deserves to be celebrated, but from a watchability standpoint, I’m much more excited to watch the Warriors machine go for greatness than I am watching Jazz players loosely guard Bryant while he goes 8 for 19 in a game the Lakers lose by 12.

Again: ESPN did the right thing.

It is a bummer about the timing, though. For as much as Bryant has become a bit of a joke in the past couple years — the aging former star refusing to admit what’s happening to his body, the ultimate competitor taking long 2s in a game the Lakers are losing by 25 — it’s important to remember that Bryant is one of the five greatest players to ever play the game of basketball.

It’s more than the 81-point game or the five titles, though good lord, that right there is enough to put someone in the Hall of Fame. For me, the thing about Bryant is looking at the sustained greatness.

(Though for good measure, it’s fun to watch highlights from that 81-point game.)

He was an 18-time All-Star, which yeah a few of them were padded by fans voting him in past his prime, but he was also an 11x first team All-NBA player, two-time second team and two-time third team player. For fifteen years Bryant was considered one of the best 15 players in the league. The average NBA career length is 4.8 years. Bryant was one of the 15 best players, one of the six best guards, for 15 years. That is flabbergasting.

There are a lot of what-ifs with Bryant’s career, all of which make you wonder that despite his near peerless resume, if he didn’t leave some of it on the table.

There’s the age-old: What if he and Shaquille O’Neal had worked out their differences? They won three titles together, and didn’t appear to be slowing down when the strain got too much and O’Neal left the team. How many titles did they leave on the table by breaking the band up? One? Two? More?

The other big what-if with regards to Bryant is the Chris Paul trade, which would have sent Paul to the Lakers in 2011 … until the league pulled the plug on the deal. Paul ended up going to the Clippers. The deal was done, though, and it makes you wonder if a re-energized Lakers could have made another run at a title or two.

This is insane to think about, considering he won five titles, but there’s a universe in which Kobe Bryant is an eight, or dare I say it, nine-time NBA champion.

Over the last few years, the league changed on Bryant. The Lakers, a long-time top destination for free agents, lost their luster, partly because players realized they didn’t need to be in a big market to grab endorsements and partly because the death of Dr. Jerry Buss left the team without its leader in the front office.

The rise of small ball and the three pointer left Bryant, never an elite long-distance shooter, looking out of touch and hopelessly stuck in the past. Once feared and adored, Bryant became — at least in some pockets of the internet — a bit of a joke. I too am guilty of this.

For every long contested two he took and every insane interview he gave, I chuckled. And when I heard that the Warriors were going to bump Bryant in his final game, I wasn’t mad. Of course he was getting bumped. And it was just to ESPN2. If anyone really wants to see Bryant say goodbye, they can flip over during commercials.

I stand by that take. The Warriors are going for something great, and they deserve to be watched. But that doesn’t change the fact that the timing is unfortunate.