Is this Kobe Bryant‘s final season as an NBA player? Will he leave the Los Angeles Lakers and play elsewhere? Can he make it through the NBA season without injury? These are some of the questions surrounding the Black Mamba and Los Angeles Lakers heading into the season.
If you ask one person who used to be close to him, his former coach Phil Jackson, he thinks 2015-2016 won’t be Kobe’s last season. It might be in L.A., but not as a player.
“I don’t think it’s his last year. It sounds like it may be his last year as a Laker.
One of the things about great players — there’s a part of me that kind of wishes maybe Michael Jordan had said goodbye to basketball after that shot in Utah. But you see the game and the speed of the game becomes something that you’re used to, and you can handle as the activity, speed, how many things are coming at you at once. But your body fails you. That’s the denominator there. It’s gotta be comeuppance from God or from age.
So with Kobe, he’s had, what? Two seasons that have been aborted because of injuries. I think he’s going to be really better than people think, and I think there will still be a future for him as he goes through this season into next year, where people are going to ask, ‘Do you still want to play basketball?’ So we’ll see how it goes.”
We’ve heard Bryant say a few times he wants to retire a Laker, but money talks. His contract comes off the books this upcoming season and if he can still hold up, health wise, it’ll be interesting how things play out in Los Angeles. The Lakers have enough money to bring in multiple max contracts beyond next season and hope to attract some All-Star talent to help bring them back to dominance along with the young stars they have drafted.
It all depends on Kobe and how his body holds up. The ball is in his court.
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