Kobe: 'Wishful thinking' to play all 18 games left
LOS ANGELES — Just 18 games remain in the career of Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, who is retiring this summer after 20 seasons in the NBA. But how many of those games will Bryant actually play, given that he has missed several lately because of injuries?
“Dude, I don’t know,” Bryant said Sunday after the Lakers’ 112-95 win over the Golden State Warriors at Staples Center. “Hopefully all of them. I know that’s wishful thinking, but hopefully.”
Bryant, 37, returned to the court Sunday after missing three of the past four games with a sore right shoulder.
“It’s sore, but if I feel like it’s not clicking or unstable, I’ll go out and play,” Bryant said after scoring 12 points on 4-of-14 shooting in about 24 minutes. “That being said, it feels solid right now.”
Bryant tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder in January, forcing him to miss all but 35 games of the 2014-15 season.
“Last game, I’m riding in the car, and if I reach up to turn on the radio and I can’t move my arm, it’s not a good thing,” Bryant said of his shoulder, which has bothered him virtually all season.
Bryant said he even went up to dunk at one point Sunday, but his shoulder stopped him.
“Yeah, I forgot about it and I went up, and I thought about dunking it, and I brought the arm back and the shoulder just kind of caught on me,” Bryant said. “It is what it is.”
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