That foursome has a cushion of hundreds of thousands of votes-or more than a million in the case of Bryant.
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“I still wish he would lay all those up”, interim coach Luke Walton said of the dunk. “The Lakers were right”.
Through it all, Bryant sat on the bench smiling. Bryant waved, tipped his head and clapped his hands in appreciation.
“Young guys are starting to get a little resilient”.
Bryant experienced a more hard task, though. Bryant has almost double the votes of any Eastern Conference player, as LeBron James leads that pack with 830,345.
Bryant said there’s something special about Oracle, where he recorded his first 50-point game (51) in a game on December 6, 2000, when the Warriors’ Antawn Jamison also scored 51 in a 125-122 overtime win for Golden State. He played 16 minutes, scoring seven points on 3-of-9 shooting before exiting. “The soreness I can deal with”.
Lakers: F Kobe Bryant (R Achilles strain, R shoulder soreness) is active. Bryant isn’t having any of that, and Scott, who ran Bryant into the ground last season by playing him like he’s 25, isn’t stopping Bryant from doing too much once again. “So if they vote for me, all respect to them”.
The Warriors led by only three points at the half, and were off their mark for the better part of the first two frames. If it’s not better in two weeks, I won’t play for two weeks. “I wanted him to get the just due that he deserves”.
Bryant sat out the Lakers’ loss to the Utah Jazz on Sunday with the same injury.
I would take the Lakers with the points if the circumstances were different, but I don’t want to back against a Warriors team playing at home and coming off a surprise loss.
But Scott knew those numbers “weren’t going to last”. Stephen Curry scored 26 points to lead all scorers. Los Angeles has lost eight of nine to Golden State. And the Lakers committed six of their 21 turnovers during that time. Holiday was on a minutes’ restriction earlier this season after returning from last season’s leg injury and is averaging 18.8 points over the past four games.
Since announcing his plans to retire at the end of the season, Kobe Bryant has enjoyed warm receptions from every crowd as his legendary career winds down. “But for him I just wish him all the success in the world going forward and I know he’ll find a way to be successful in something else”. “They’ve always been great fans”.
Lakers trainer Gary Vitti believes that Kobe should be taking some time off to properly recover if he does intend to play out the season.
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“He feels a certain responsibility to play in these arenas, which is admirable of him”, Scott said. I was very close to him for a long time.
