THE FRONT ROW WITH MARK NELKE: Sunday, April 17, 2016

Given a choice between watching Kobe’s final NBA game on TV and the Warriors going for a regular-season record 73rd victory, I found myself watching Kobe for some reason.

I wasn’t sure why at first.

After all, the Lakers were concluding their third straight season of irrelevancy — a total of 65 wins and 181 losses since their last playoff appearance in 2013. They were six years removed from their last NBA title.

Their games didn’t matter. And the novelty of Kobe scoring 29 points on 9-of-31 shooting was long gone.

MEANWHILE, THE Golden State Warriors actually play an entertaining brand of basketball. They keep the ball moving. They pass the ball to the open man. They cut to the basket.

Their star, Steph Curry, shoots outrageously long shots that used to get people benched — except that he makes most of them.

They play teams that like to stand there and dribble the ball for 18 seconds, then are left with someone on an “iso” or a postup to have to jack up a high-degree-of-difficulty shot with the shot clock winding down.

They beat those teams — often badly. The other teams can’t understand why — and often come up with excuses.

Slowly, the Warriors are changing the way NBA basketball is played — though many teams still follow the old sheep.

Being a fan of team basketball, with player movement and ball movement, you’d think I would have opted to focus on the Warriors — better known nationally as Steph Curry and the Warriors, lumped together in much the same spirit as Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, and Tony Orlando and Dawn.

(Of course, around here the media is almost contractually obligated to insert former WSU star Klay Thompson into the name of the team — as an example, “Former Cougar star Klay Thompson and the Warriors, who are also led by some fellow named Curry.”)

Maybe it was because it seemed a foregone conclusion that the Warriors were going to pummel the Washington Generals — er, the Memphis Grizzlies — and eclipse the MJ-led Chicago Bulls’ record of 72 wins, set in 1995-96. We’ll have two more months to watch Golden State thrash the field in the NBA playoffs.

Maybe it was the realization that the Lakers, no matter how awful they are, are still the Lakers. And the Warriors, no matter how good they are these days, in their history were still really bad many more years than they were good.

So I checked with my wiener dogs to see which game they preferred to watch, but Kenzie and Bella were more interested in fighting over the chew rope, and plotting their next attack on the cats.

So I did the split-screen thing, had both games on the TV — with the sound on Kobe and the Lakers.

WITH EACH made basket by Kobe, the Lakers game got more interesting. I think the initial fear was that he would go 4 for 17, score 12 points and have people wondering why he didn’t retire sooner.

So even though Kobe kept shooting, he started making quite a few of them as well. Sure, it took him 50 shots to score 60 points, but who cares? Who else on that team would you rather watch shoot on this night, in a game that didn’t matter to the Utah Jazz, who were eliminated from playoff contention before tipoff (though I’m not sure a Jerry Sloan-coached Jazz team would have let Kobe put up 60 on them, final game of his career or not).

Besides, for most of the game Kobe’s points were going for naught, as the Jazz held a comfortable lead. It was looking like many other Laker games in recent years — Kobe got his, but L.A. lost.

Then, something cool happened. As Kobe kept making shots, the Lakers rallied. He kept making more shots — open shots, forced shots, shots in traffic — including the one that put L.A. ahead. This wasn’t like the nights when he kept shooting fallaway jumpers off the wrong foot, just because he could. These were shots he was taking — and making — during the Lakers’ championship days. And he helped seal the unlikely win over the Jazz with two free throws, followed by a long pass that led to a dunk.

Somehow, on this night, Kobe took a game with nothing else on the line and put on a show for the ages, upstaging history made on another channel by a refreshing, exciting team.

Mamba out, indeed.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.