"I really had to put a lot of traction on that bone to put it back into place" - Gary Vitti said he was stunned Kobe Bryant kept playing after dislocating a finger
"I really had to put a lot of traction on that bone to put it back into place" - Gary Vitti said he was stunned Kobe Bryant kept playing after dislocating a finger originally appeared on Basketball Network.
It didn't matter how bad it hurt. If Kobe Bryant could stand, he would play.
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That was the unspoken rule in the Los Angeles Lakers locker room, an understanding that became a legend over two decades of grit, pain and legacy. And on Feb. 19, 2016, that legend added one more scar to its story.
The Lakers were up against the San Antonio Spurs, chasing a win that never came. Midway through the fourth quarter, Bryant went after a rebound. That's when it happened — his right middle finger bent unnaturally. On live TV, fans saw the shock ripple across his face. It wasn't just jammed. It was badly dislocated.
Putting it in place
Trainer Gary Vitti, the man who had been with the Lakers since 1984 and had seen every kind of injury imaginable, was called in fast. This wasn't new territory, but even for someone as hardened as Vitti discovered Bryant's pain was something else.
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"If you can see my face, I really had to put a lot of traction on that bone to get it back into place," he said. "That's how dislocated it was. As tough as he was, he was writhing in pain. If you see Kobe writhing in pain, you know it hurts."
Bryant gritted through it, jaw locked, eyes burning. Vitti yanked the finger back into place with practiced brutality. The crowd winced. Bryant didn't. He exhaled and kept it moving.
This was the same player who had played through fractured fingers, sprained ankles, bone spurs, a torn rotator cuff and more than one busted knee. The same player who refused to let time, or pain, or age, or even a shattered Achilles stop him.
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Against the Spurs that night, he finished with 25 points. The Lakers lost 119-113, but no one talked about the score. They talked about Kobe, the pain and how somehow, he just kept going.
Related: "When you start endangering people's health, it's taking away from the beauty of the game" - Michael Jordan criticized how the Pistons and the Knicks played the game
Bryant's pain tolerance
Vitti had been courtside for every version of Bryant — from the teenage rookie in 1996 who wanted to dunk on everyone to the 81-point scorer in 2006 to the battered 37-year-old who could barely walk without flinching in 2016.
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No trainer in the NBA saw more of Bryant's war with pain than Vitti. And no one understood how rare his pain tolerance really was. Even when his finger was broken, he wanted to get on with the game as soon as possible.
"I put it in and as soon as I did, you could see that his pain went away," Vitti said. "Anybody else would have still been in pain."
Bryant wasn't anybody else. By then, he'd already torn his right rotator cuff and was using his left hand in games. He'd already played through broken fingers, including a right index fracture in 2009 that had to be taped into a splint — he shot through it anyway.
In the 2010 NBA Finals, he had to drain fluid from his knee between games just to be able to walk.
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Years later, he ruptured his Achilles, stood up and walked to the free-throw line to sink two shots. He pushed until his body broke and even then, he patched it together just to buy a few more minutes on the hardwood.
Even at 35 and 36, he still carried the Lakers team for a postseason push, averaging high minutes despite being in pain. Before his Achilles injury in 2013, he had played 78 games, logging 38.6 minutes per night.
Related: "I don't even know what he was thinking" - Former Lakers trainer recalls struggling to convince Kobe Bryant to leave the court after Achilles tear
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 20, 2025, where it first appeared.
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