Knee surgeries. A snapped Achilles tendon. A broken leg. Kobe Bryant fought back from those to return to the Lakers.

But now a torn rotator cuff? In his right shoulder? In his shooting arm?

At age 36?

We may have just seen the last NBA game Kobe Bryant will play, which is sad … but also a relief.

First, the torn rotator cuff.

More tests will be done on his shoulder to determine the severity of the tear. What we know from watching him is that he did not raise his right arm after the injury — which, perhaps fittingly, came on a dunk. After the game he said he felt fine going up but not so good going down.

A torn rotator cuff is no small matter.

If the pain is limited, and a person determines he doesn’t need to raise their arm over their head too often … surgery can be avoided.

For a professional athlete who intends to compete again, surgery is probably mandatory, unless it is the smallest of tears, and given the wear and tear of 20 seasons, Kobe’s shoulder could be rather a mess.

Recovery time from rotator cuff surgery seems to range from three to six months, so Kobe would be done for this season.

If everything goes well, and he fights through the pain of restoring mobility to his shoulder … well, if he has surgery in the coming week, it seems unlikely he would be ready for the start of the 2015-16 season — during which he would be 37 years old.

He already was having his worst season since he was a rookie. Check the stats for yourself.

Worse, statistical analysis seems to indicate the Lakers are significantly better when he is not on the floor.

This season, with Kobe in the game the Lakers average 95 points scored per 100 possessions and give up 115 per 100 possessions, as can be seen on the fourth block of stats here at basketballreference.com

Meanwhile, the Lakers as a team score 104.3 points per 100 possessions and give up 111.4 — and that includes Kobe’s stats.

Isolating for Kobe on/off the court, the Lakers are 14 points per 100 possessions better with their marquee player off the court — presumably by removing his awful shooting percentage (a career-low 37.3 percent) and negligible defense from the game.

His shooting percentage, by the way, is third-worst in the league among regular players, and at the moment he has the worst shooting percentage for any player averaging more than 20 points per game … in the past half century.

Which has to be painful for a guy who is one of the dozen or so best players in the history of the game. But the numbers don’t lie. Even if we were to determine some odd factors that suggest he is not as bad as his numbers, it is hard to imagine it would close that 20-point gap between the Lakers and their opponents, when he plays.

A case can be made he should have given up the game already, but that is not in his DNA. He is a fitness fanatic, and he has played hurt more than once.

But he is 36 and he has played 1,500 games (regular season and playoffs) and 55,415 minutes.

The human body can put up with only so much, especially as it ages.

Kobe may have to be satisfied with the five NBA titles (yes, one fewer than Michael Jordan) and the No. 3 position in most points scored in the league, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone.

He was a great player, perhaps the fiercest competitor in NBA history (if it’s not him, it’s Jordan) and a clutch performer. He was fun to watch even if he was, apparently, miserable to play with.

For some of us, there was something satisfying about watching a guy demand that everyone around him, including Shaquille O’Neal, want to win as much as he did.

But this is a good time for him to go out. It comes as a major injury, something he could not control. It can easily mark the point where he just could not get back, realistically. No guilt need be involved — and no one but Kobe himself would deem it some sort of failure if he did not return.

He gets $23.5 million this season and $25 million next season, and then he is off the books, and the Lakers can begin anew. Really. Fresh. Without feeling obligated to play the guy everyone came to see, because Kobe Bryant for most of 20 years put on a great show.