Lakers GM: Kobe Bryant could retire after next season
It’s been a topic of conversation for years now. With so many accolades, championships and miles on his now twice-surgically-repaired legs — and a surgically repaired shoulder thrown in — when will Kobe Bryant decide to hang up his high tops and begin the long and well-deserved walk to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame? According to Los Angeles Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak, the Mamba himself has said he expects to begin that journey after this coming season.
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
Kupchak shared as much during a Thursday radio interview, according to ESPN.com’s Baxter Holmes:
“He has indicated to me that this is it,” Kupchak said Thursday in a radio appearance with SiriusXM NBA Radio. […]
“I think first and foremost, he’s on the last year of a deal,” Kupchak told SiriusXM NBA Radio. “There have been no discussions about anything going forward. I don’t think there will be.” […]
“A year from now, if there’s something different to discuss, then it will be discussed then,” Kupchak said of Bryant potentially playing beyond next season. “I talk to him from time to time … and he is recovering. He’s running. He’s getting movement and strength in the shoulder. We expect a full recovery, but yeah, he’s much closer to the end than to the beginning.”
“I think it is clear,” Kupchak said. “He’s on the last year of his deal. There have been no discussions [about playing beyond next season]. He hasn’t indicated that he wants to continue to play.”
Kupchak’s comments, while noteworthy, are not necessarily new. He struck a similar note during a conversation with NBA.com’s David Aldridge back in December:
“All indications are, to me, from him, that this (two-year contract) is going to be it,” Kupchak said. “If somebody’s thinking of buying a ticket three years from now to see Kobe play, I would not do that. Don’t wait. Do it this year.”
(Always be selling, kids.)
Bryant, who has missed 123 games over the past two seasons and suffered three consecutive season-ending injuries, will be 37 years old when the 2015-16 regular season begins in October. He’ll be on the back end of the two-year, $48.5 million extension he received in November 2013, completing two full decades in forum blue and gold, with his spot among the three highest scorers in NBA history already established.
He’s joked in the past that he’s “70 in basketball years,” after rolling up 55,414 combined regular- and postseason minutes in the NBA, with an awful lot of those minutes having seen Kobe bear a disproportionate amount of responsibility for carrying the Lakers offense — which, of course, he’s been more than happy to do, sometimes to a fault. The current model of the Lakers, featuring 2014 lottery pick Julius Randle, whichever teen prospect Kupchak and company select with the newly won No. 2 pick in the 2015 NBA draft and 2014-15 All-Rookie First Team point guard Jordan Clarkson, doesn’t seem to be one built for the league’s preeminent greybeard; barring a shocking worst-to-first turn this coming season, it doesn’t seem likely that the Lakers will resume contending in the brutal Western Conference for at least a couple of seasons.
[ThePostGame: LeBron James wants to be Batman]
Given that, and given Bryant’s previously stated opposition to going someplace else to try to ride younger stars to more NBA titles, and given the utter impossibility of Kobe allowing himself to be just another guy on someone else’s team so that he can stick around into his early 40s, it seems entirely reasonable that he would walk away after one last lucrative lap around L.A. As ever, though, we won’t totally believe we’ve seen the last fadeaway jumper and jaw-jut until the man himself speaks the words, walks off the court and starts making his way for Springfield, Mass.
– – – – – – –
Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don’t Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, “Like” BDL on Facebook and follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
