Don’t worry Lakers fans, Kobe will come back, but it won’t this month. According to ESPN, he is still a couple of weeks away, but with the contract extension behind him he is ready to go for that elusive 6th title.
“It makes me want to run through a wall for them,” Bryant said in his first public comments since signing a two-year, $48.5 million deal with the Lakers on Monday. “It kind of just adds more fuel to the fire of being able to come out and kind of prove to everybody that [the Lakers] are right and everybody else is wrong.”
“We have the opportunity to do that,” Bryant said when asked if the Lakers could contend with a core of him, a re-signed Pau Gasol and another max-level free agent. “I don’t even know legally what I’m allowed to say and not say in terms of impending free agents and things like that, so I’ll kind of stay away from that, but we have the ability to do something special.”
“I’m comfortable with that, for sure,” Bryant said. “The goal is to win a championship and put ourselves in position to win a championship. I feel like we have some really good pieces, guys who are really competitive and athletic and have the energy where they can carry a game and I think that they’ve been showing that — particularly the last three games — so if I can come back and keep my minutes to a minimum, that would be perfect.”
The last chapter of Kobe’s career is about to start and it will be interesting.