On the surface, the Los Angeles Lakers merely won Game 3 of a first-round playoff series Thursday night at the Staples Center. Yet, this one victory against the Phoenix Suns carried an enormous amount of resonance and meaning for fans of the Purple and Gold. Kobe Bryant is a part of this story. After Devin Booker of the Suns was ejected late in Game 3, the LA crowd broke into Kobe chants.

The victory gave the Lakers leverage in the playoff series. That certainly matters. Yet, the story of one of the NBA's most successful and glamorous franchises does not rest on the relatively small pillars of first-round stories.

The great chapters in Lakers history—the same is true for the Boston Celtics, San Antonio Spurs, and Chicago Bulls—flow from conquests in the Conference Finals and the NBA Finals in particular.

The question then arises: Why was this third game in a first-round series so important and special to the fans who came to Staples Center on Thursday? The answer offers the connection to the Kobe Bryant chants which came from the crowd after Booker was tossed for his push on Dennis Schroder.

This 109-95 win for Los Angeles marked the first home playoff win for the Lakers since May 18, 2012. That's right: This was LA's first playoff victory inside Staples Center in nine years.

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The Lakers' long playoff drought over the past decade, combined with the fact that the 2020 Orlando playoff bubble was a neutral-site setup for multiple months of playoff basketball, meant that the Lake Show's 2020 NBA championship did not involve a home-court playoff victory.

One has to go nine years into the history books to identify the Lakers' last home playoff win before this one. It was a 99-96 victory over Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and the rest of the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals. That result made the series 2-1 in favor of the Thunder, who then took Games 4 and 5 to win the series.

Kobe Bryant scored 36 points in the Lakers' 2012 playoff win over the Thunder. He raged against the dying of the light and did his best to keep his team alive.

Lakers fans proudly remembered that moment, which is made more poignant by Bryant's tragic and devastating death in January of 2020 in a helicopter crash. The Kobe Bryant chants celebrated a life and a career and a nine-year journey through the wilderness for a proud franchise seeking a repeat championship this spring.