Kobe Bryant a muted presence in Lakers’ 123-122 overtime loss at Minnesota

Not every city will offer a raucous arena filled with giddy fans.

There were still plenty of No. 24 jerseys in the Target Center crowd but Wednesday marked the most muted stop in six road games since Kobe Bryant announced his end-of-season retirement.

There were pockets of empty seats and a brief, simple pregame video when he was introduced before the Lakers played the Minnesota Timberwolves.

It was kind of understandable. There wasn’t much history between Bryant and the Timberwolves, other than the Lakers ending their dreams of an NBA Finals appearance with a 4-2 victory in the 2004 Western Conference finals.

In fact, Bryant didn’t even finish Wednesday’s game, leaving for good with 3:56 left in the third quarter and telling Coach Byron Scott to let the young players finish it. He had 11 points on five-for-13 shooting. The Lakers lost in overtime, 123-122.

The most poignant moment might have been 90 minutes before tip-off when Bryant met Bob Williams, the first black player for the Minneapolis Lakers.

Williams’ wife, Marietta, helped make it happen by asking the Timberwolves’ public-relations department ahead of time if her husband could meet Bryant.

The Timberwolves called the Lakers, the Lakers asked Bryant and a meeting was arranged outside the locker room.

“He was a pioneer,” Bryant later said of Williams, who played for Minneapolis from 1955-57. “It’s very tough, it’s hard for us to imagine as players in today’s game what it must have been like for him to go through at that point in time, the difficulties that he faced personally and professionally.”

Williams, now 84, averaged 2.9 points in 24 games over two NBA seasons.

More Lakers nostalgia

The “Showtime” Lakers come up a lot these days, partly because Scott played for them and partly because the present-day team is so poor.

So Scott was asked a curious question Wednesday — how would Bryant have done on the 1980s Lakers?

“I don’t know,” Scott said. “You have Magic [Johnson], you have Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar], James Worthy — you have three Hall of Famers right there. That would be interesting to see how that dynamic worked. With those other three guys, I think it would work out pretty good because they were all about winning. That’s what Kobe’s all about as well.”

Scott played shooting guard on three Lakers championship teams.

“I know one thing: I’d be the sixth man. Or seventh man,” he said. “I wouldn’t be starting on that team, not with him out there.”

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com

Twitter: Mike_Bresnahan