subject: Kobe Bryant to play Monday [print this page] Bryant said he relishes the opportunity to promote the game of basketball to a new mlb jerseysfan base, but is keeping the exhibition game in the proper perspective.
"It's basically just a public practice, that's actually what it is," Bryant said. "It's a public scrimmage and you get a chance to work on a myriad of things."
Bryant will play in the season opener on Oct. 26 but will likely need an additional two weeks beyond then to get back to full strength, Jackson told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
While the Lakers will have Bryant for the first game of their nfl jersey season schedule, they will be without Andrew Bynum, who continues to recover from offseason knee surgery of his own. Bynum is expected to miss the first two to three weeks of the season, but on Sunday he said he could be out until December.
"Yeah, it's a possibility," he told the L.A. Times. "I've got a little bit of pain still. It just depends on when I'm cleared."
"He's been saying that," Jackson told the L.A. Times. "I don't know why he's talking about December. He can get weight-bearing activities started at the end of this month. Can you play in two weeks [after that]? Can you play in three weeks? Four weeks puts you at the end of November. So let's just let it happen and not talk about what the timing is."
Lamar Odom will start in Bynum's place, and Pau Gasol will slide over to center.
"Right now he's going to have to carry the team while Kobe's not functioning at 100 percent," Jackson said of Gasol. "He's the guy who's going to have to have a leadership role."
The Lakers will also be without Luke Walton on Monday. Walton reinjured the hamstring he strained earlier in the week, which caused him to miss Friday's practice. He will not play in either of the two pre mlb jerseys season games in Europe and will be re-evaluated next week when the team returns to the United States.
