Kobe Bryant Wants To Be Back By Season Opener
Kobe Bryant said he wants to return to the Los Angeles Lakers by the start of the 2013-12 season, but he needs to take his recovery from a torn Achilles tendon as it comes.
Bryant, who suffered the injury shortly before the playoffs, said he’s going to be limited by how his rehab comes along. He has already had his stitches removed and his cast taken off.
He said, if all goes well, he’ll be playing in the season opener.
“I hope so,” Bryant said in a sit-down interview with ESPNLosAngeles.com on Monday. “That’s the challenge. With the tendon, there’s really only but so much you can do. There’s a certain amount of time that they deem necessary for the tendon to heal where you don’t overstretch it and now you never get that spring back.
“So, you just have to be patient, let the tendon heal, and then when that moment comes when they say, ‘OK, we can take off the regulator so to speak and now it’s on you to train as hard as you can to get back to where you want to be,’ that’s going to be a good day.”
While he works on his own recovery, Kobe Bryant said he’s also making a pitch to free agent Dwight Howard to remain with the team. Bryant said he’ll give an “opening statement” and hopes he also has the “final word” with Howard.
“For me, you kind of let him do his due diligence and then move in and talk to him and figure out if this is a place he wants to be,” Bryant said. “We all want him here. But then that’s when the selling begins [after Howard is courted by other teams]. You don’t start the selling process right before he goes and does all this stuff. You want to get the last word. You want to have the final word and the closing argument.”
It won’t be easy keeping Dwight Howard. He is reportedly drawing interest from the Dallas Mavericks and Houston Rockets, with both teams angling to make trades to free up cap space.
Howard and Kobe Bryant had a bit of trouble during the year. While Howard was out with an injury, Kobe seemed to imply that the center was taking a bit too long in his recovery.
