Kobe Bryant will make $25 million this season and you deserve what they give you, so I have no issues with that, but what happens if Kobe wants to play next year for the Lakers?
How much will he want?
Will he accept less playing time?
Will the Lakers even want him back?
A lot of those questions will be answered by how he plays this season, but here is what Jim Buss had to say about Kobe’s future.
“We’re going to approach it like it is [his final season], but that doesn’t mean it is,” Jim Buss, the Lakers’ part-owner and executive vice president of basketball operations, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.
“I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘This is it, Kobe, you’re done,’ because it’s not my decision, it’s his decision.”
The Lakers can’t publicly say they hope Kobe will retire, but you get the feeling they hope that is what happens.