May 13
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In between Games 3 and 4, he flew from Sacramento back to L.A. to be with his wife, Vanessa, who had been hospitalized due to pain in her side.
Assured that she would be OK, Bryant returned to the state capital ready to give his team everything he had.
“I was prepared to do whatever,” Bryant told reporters. “I was going to run and push myself to exhaustion. It doesn’t matter. Every rebound. Every loose ball. I think my teammates understood that. To us, it was a life-or-death situation. We just weren’t going to lose.”