Kobe: I'm Not Sitting

Shapecity · Jan 15, 2010

Kobe Bryant knows what people are saying.

He knows what kinds of questions he's going to get every night from the media pests.

He hears it all and, as always, refuses to listen.

"If I can walk, I'm playin'," Bryant said late Wednesday night, hobbling down the hallway at American Airlines Center at a strained post-game speed more commonly associated with his brittle coach.

"You know that."

Even walking is a chore for No. 24 these days, but Bryant had zero trouble convincing Phil Jackson to let him play against the Mavs less than 24 hours after back spasms knocked Kobe out of the previous night's loss at San Antonio.

He's been struggling for weeks with a mangled index finger on his shooting hand and has suddenly been forced to start stealing from Steve Nash's playbook, as seen in Dallas when Bryant spent the entire second quarter laid out on towels near the Lakers' bench. Yet he reacts with Raja Bell-level "I don't know this kid" indignation when someone has the temerity to ask: Why not just take a week or two off to let your body heal for the long run?

"Why would I want to do that?" Bryant says.

Take time off for the long run? Even after he woke up at 5 a.m. to spend several hours getting his back worked on leading up to tipoff in Dallas, Bryant wouldn't take the electric-cart ride offered to take him back to the team bus. He logged 35 labored minutes in L.A.'s best win of the season, which he naturally capped with a clutch elbow jumper and two huge defensive plays in crunch time in spite of his weakened state, then insisted that his history of playing through injuries justifies his right to ignore conventional wisdom after his back seized up in San Antonio.

"You can go right down the line," Bryant said. "I've played through a bruised ulnar nerve on my elbow when my arm went numb. This finger. I had a groin pull … my groin was the size of a softball. But I played through that. I had a hamstring pull and I played through that.

"I've had all this stuff and played through it. … It just seems simple to me."

To me it seems like the sort of needless risk that only adds to the list of Lakers vulnerabilities detailed by our own John Hollinger earlier this week. The way Ron Artest has been fitting in, serious injury would appear to have supplanted the prospect of clubhouse implosion as the No. 1 threat to the Lakers' status as monstrous favorites to represent the West in a third successive NBA Finals.

But Bryant gets an uncommon amount of latitude from Jackson and longtime Lakers athletic trainer Gary Vitti, even after he limped through a 28-for-88 shooting stretch in the three games before his back went out against the Spurs.

He hasn't a missed a regular-season game through injury since an ankle sprain ruled him out against Atlanta on Dec. 8, 2006 … and has somehow convinced his bosses that he can hurt the Lakers' psyche more by suddenly turning cautious.

It's also easier to scoff at the concerns of panicky outsiders after you've just won a championship doing it your way. Lamar Odom hit me with the same dismissive tone, insisting that Kobe can will himself through his growing assortment of health worries.

"I always tell people that if Kobe was 6-2, he'd be the best point guard in the game," Odom said. "If he was 6-9, he'd be the best power forward. If he was 7-1, best center.

"He'll be all right. This [run of ailments] is just something that's going to pass."

You can't tell the Lakers otherwise.

They've made it through a half-season with Artest largely without incident -- aside from Artest's mysterious fall at home after the Christmas Day loss to Cleveland -- and insist that the Artest skeptics will never understand the sway of the Lakers' culture.

"It can't go wrong here," Odom said of Artest. "It can't go wrong here because of the strong personalities we have in this locker room. Derek [Fisher], Pau, Kobe, myself. [Trouble] won't happen here."

Odom did acknowledge that the Lakers have been just so-so on the road, benefited greatly from a home-heavy schedule in the first six weeks and concedes that L.A. -- with Gasol having missed 17 of the first 39 games and without much consistency from the bench -- hasn't been as dominant as some pundits predicted. However …

"I would definitely agree with all that," Odom said, "and we've got the best record in the NBA."

Bryant then proceeded to take issue with the idea that the recent report from the New York Post's Peter Vecsey about a potential Andrew Bynum-for-Chris Bosh swap will send young 'Drew into one of his funks -- "I won't let that happen, either," Kobe says -- before finally finding some humor in a question about his own future.

The 31-year-old vowed recently not to discuss his ongoing talks with the Lakers toward a contract extension because he was determined to "keep my business behind closed doors." So he's not taking questions about a reported stalemate in negotiations on some of the finer contract details such as his payment schedule and his no-trade clause even though the sides have essentially agreed on max money for the longest allowable extension of three more seasons. Or how he feels about Gasol getting an extension first and those 17 games Gasol has missed because of hamstrings.

The volume on Bryant's laughter, when asked as he closed in on the waiting bus if he still expects to retire a Laker, would bring some comfort to his fervent followers in Lakerland if they could have heard it.

"Highly probable," Kobe said, cackling.
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Source: ESPN

DynastYWarrioR6 · Jan 15, 2010

"My groin was the size of a softball"

bbwtrench · Jan 18, 2010

expected.

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Kobe: I'm Not Sitting

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