Gary Vitti, the Los Angeles Lakers’ head athletic trainer, wants Kobe Bryant to take a couple of weeks off.
Clearly, he should know better.
Vitti has worked with the Lakers since before Bryant, so he has been with the Black Mamba for his entire career. He knows by now that convincing Kobe to sit is hell on earth, and that it will be even trickier to do so now, as No. 24 prepares to march off into the California sunset after this season.
Neverthless, Vitti still wants Kobe to take it easy, to rest a sore Achilles. And Kobe, quite predictably, ain’t having it, per the Los Angeles Times’ Broderick Turner:
There have been interesting developments regarding Kobe Bryant and the injury to his right Achilles’ tendon that forced him out of Tuesday night’s game late in the second quarter.
Lakers Coach Bryon Scott said after practice Wednesday that Bryant said he was “feeling better” and that Scott would list his small forward as questionable, probable and a game-time decision for Thursday night’s game at Golden State.
Then Scott raised some eyebrows when he said Lakers athletic trainer Gary Vitti wants to shut down Bryant for a week or two to let the injury heal, but Scott said Bryant would be against that idea.
Kobe Bryant didn’t practice Wednesday, but he got treatment and will fly with the team to Oakland for his final appearance against the Warriors in a Lakers uniform.
“I know him and I know he wants to play,” Scott said. “If that’s the case, I’ll wait until tomorrow to see how he feels. Then if he says, ‘Coach, I want to play,’ then we have to have another discussion on how long he can play, how many minutes. I’m just going to wait until tomorrow and see how he feels and go from there.”
Not going to sit here and say it’s on Lakers head coach Byron Scott to get Kobe to understand he should sit, but that’s implied.
At 37, playing for a bad Lakers team, knowing there is, almost literally, no tomorrow, no next game, no next playoff push, no next championship, Kobe might not see a reason to preach caution over grit. This is it for him, and he wants to play, to compete, to ward off remaining naysayers who think him a joke—a name and a resume more than a current player.
But he has also talked in the past about remaining healthy beyond basketball, and pushing an injured Achilles is no safe gambit. So maybe he should sit, just to be safe, just to ensure that he can actually finish his final go-round not only healthy but on the court, with his teammates, competing.
Then again, Kobe is Kobe.
He is not going to sit until it’s absolutely necessary—or until the Lakers force him to do so, which they, apparently, are not yet ready to do.
