Phil Jackson doesn’t think Kobe’s retiring, but it ‘might be his last year as a Laker’
Now that he’s been medically cleared to resume basketball activities, Kobe Bryant is preparing to return to the Los Angeles Lakers. The future Hall of Famer’s 20th season in purple and gold will also be the final season of the two-year, $48.5 million extension he inked with the club in November of 2013, months after one season-ending injury and shortly before another, which was followed by a third earlier this year.
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The looming end of Kobe’s contract, and of his second decade of professional basketball, has led many to wonder whether this season marks the end of the line for one of the greatest players in NBA history. For what it’s worth, the coach who led Bryant to five NBA titles and one of his closest friends in the game don’t seem convinced that this is it.
Former Lakers coach Phil Jackson, now the president of basketball operations for the New York Knicks, and ex-L.A. point guard Derek Fisher, now the Knicks’ head coach, offered their perspectives during New York’s season-opening media availability on Friday:
Phil Jackson immediately says “I don’t think it’s his last year” when asked if he thinks this is it for Kobe Bryant.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) September 25, 2015
Phil, on Kobe: “I don’t think this is his last year. Might be his last year as a Laker.”
— Chris Herring (@HerringWSJ) September 25, 2015
Derek Fisher also shook his head right away. Two of the people who know him best think there are more seasons to come.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) September 25, 2015
Phil Jackson says that he thinks Kobe Bryant is going to be better than people think this season.
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) September 25, 2015
Phil: “I think [Kobe] is going to be better than ppl think.” He says he assumes there will offers on the table 4 him to continue his career.
— Chris Herring (@HerringWSJ) September 25, 2015
Derek Fisher on Kobe: “I just want him to be healthy.”
— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) September 25, 2015
Jackson and Fisher expounded on their comments a bit, according to ESPN.com’s Ohm Youngmisuk:
“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,” Jackson said. “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.”
Knicks head coach Derek Fisher isn’t ready to see his former longtime Lakers teammate hang it up just yet.
“I just want him to be healthy, basically, and then go from there,” Fisher said. “I, personally, wouldn’t like this to be his last year playing basketball. I don’t think the game of basketball deserves for him not to play.”
Jackson and Fisher’s comments come on the heels of fellow former Laker greats Shaquille O’Neal and Jerry West saying they don’t believe this will, or should, be Bryant’s final season, either. On the other side of the coin, Magic Johnson said earlier this year that he thought Bryant should hang up his high tops if the Lakers failed to add a superstar this summer. (We suspect Earvin doesn’t think Roy Hibbert, Lou Williams, Brandon Bass and Metta World Peace qualify.)
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These remarks will, of course, spark speculation in some quarters that recent rumor-mongering surrounding the Zen Master’s possible interest in making a run at Bryant next summer might be more smoke-portending-fire than mere smokescreen.
That doesn’t necessarily make a whole heck of a lot of sense, given Jackson’s offseason efforts to recast the Knicks’ roster as a youth-and-defense-oriented unit directed toward contention in several years’ time rather than a club willing to spend top dollar on past-their-prime talents in pursuit of immediate gains. But hey, who says these sorts of things have to make sense? It’s not as if the Knicks don’t have a history of acting irrationally when stars get dangled in front of their face, after all; while those later-for-now moves (which, really, have more often tended to be later-for-a-hoped-for-version-of-the-past-that-is-gone-forever) happened before Phil took the franchise’s reins, it remains anybody’s guess just how long famously irascible owner James Dolan’s willingness to hang back and let Jackson cook will last.
That said, even if Jackson would like to use a chunk of the $19 million in salary cap space the Knicks are estimated to have available to spend in free agency next summer to woo Bryant, it takes two to tango. Would Kobe really trade in the purple and gold for the blue and orange — or, for that matter, the colors of any of the teams he’s fought tooth and nail to vanquish ever since he was a teenager?
It feels almost impossible to envision Bryant donning a different uniform from the one he’s worn en route to five titles, 17 All-Star appearances and third place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. But we’ve thought that about most of the greatest players of the past couple of generations, only to be proven wrong time and again, watching Michael Jordan suit up for the Washington Wizards, Karl Malone head to Hollywood, Patrick Ewing plod around for the Seattle SuperSonics and Orlando Magic, and so on. Ballplayers play ball, and if they still feel like they can perform at the point where their longtime employers think it’s time to cut bait, they’ll continue to do so.
It wouldn’t be shocking if, when push comes to shove, Kobe has no interest in looking elsewhere; he’s said in the past that he’s not interested in bouncing around from team to team, chasing a sixth ring. For the time being, though, he’s not ruling anything out — including, as he told Yahoo Sports NBA reporter Marc J. Spears this summer, a possible second act overseas:
Q: After growing up in Italy and spending time in China, could you see yourself ending your career playing at either place?
Kobe: “I can see myself doing that. I can see myself doing a lot of stuff. That’s a whole other question. I will make some decisions when I decide to hang it up.”
And, despite years of speculation on the matter and Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak’s comments to the contrary, Kobe hasn’t yet definitively made that call, as he told Spears:
Q: Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak has hinted that next season can be your last. Could it be?
Kobe: “We haven’t set anything in stone and I’ve talked about it before. But could this be the last [season]? Absolutely. It’s tough to decide. It’s really tough to make those types of decisions. Players I have spoken to say, ‘Kobe you will know.’
“I’m making this very simple. Either I like playing the game and going through this process or I don’t. I try to strip it down to the simplest form. Either I like playing some more or I don’t. But I think that decision needs to be made after the season. It’s hard to make a decision like that before the season.”
Bryant has said in the past that he wants to walk away from the game on his own terms rather than having the decision made for him due to injury. If Kupchak, Byron Scott and company are able to find an effective method of keeping Bryant healthy and operational throughout this season, come campaign’s end, he’ll have to make that decision — and, to hear Lakers boss Jim Buss tell it, the door will be open for Bryant to come back … provided, of course, that when the Lakers “explain the role” they envision for a 38-year-old expected to take a backseat to rising talents like D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle, “he still wants to do that and that’s how he wants to go out.”
All that open-ended talk and bet-hedging leaves a potential resolution that, as Forum Blue and Gold’s Darius Soriano puts it, few Lakers fans like considering: “No one really wants to speak out loud about the prospect of Kobe not retiring yet not being a Laker.” With the season just around the corner, though, discussions of that prospect are going to get louder and louder … especially now that Kobe’s former coach has just pumped up the volume.
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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!
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