The Lakers finished last season with the third-worst record in the NBA, but a 36-year-old Kobe Bryant thinks his lifelong team can return to the playoffs with him on the floor next season.
“Of course it can. Absolutely,” Bryant told Yahoo Sports when asked if this edition of the Lakers can make the playoffs. “We have talented players in their respective positions. We have some really young players. How exactly will the pieces of the puzzle fit? We really don’t know.
"We are going to (training) camp trying to piece this together just like every other team does. We have to figure out what our strengths are, figure out what our weaknesses are. And every time we step on the court we are going to try to hide our weaknesses and step up to our strengths.”
Bryant suffered a tear in his right rotator cuff in January and has since been in the middle of swirling retirement speculation.
Reports indicate the upcoming season will be his last, but Bryant isn’t ruling out an extra year or two after that.
“It’s really tough to make those types of decisions,” Bryant said in an extensive Q&A worth reading in full. “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 made it clear that becoming a free agent next offseason won’t affect his decision whether or not to continue his career saying he’s “never played for money.” And seeing as he’s made over $300 million in his career from the Lakers (according to Basketball-Reference), he added his family is “comfortable financially.”