Sports
After Latest Injury, How Much Longer Will Kobe Bryant Play?
Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant (24) drives against New Orleans Pelicans guard Nate Wolters, right, during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
(USA Today) – Father Time is running the score up on Kobe Bryant.
And this game — one that has spanned 19 remarkable seasons and made for a one-of-a-kind career — may be over soon.
The 36-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star whose past two seasons were ruined by devastating injuries has yet another to contend with now, a tear in his right rotator cuff that may lead to surgery and will most certainly require some serious soul searching within the game’s most determined player. How long can he keep doing this? How long — especially after the recovery from the Achilles tendon tear and the broken leg, and with so little hope in sight for the fallen Lakers franchise — does he want to do this?
Father Time will tell.
A week before the right-handed Bryant was sinking left-handed jumpshots against the New Orleans Pelicans because of the injury that had yet to be diagnosed, he said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times after a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers that the thoughts of retirement after this season were already creeping into his mind. Such admissions have become more common in this later stage of Bryant’s days, the man with the legendary edge and ego becoming open and honest about himself in ways we never saw in his younger years.
