Kobe Bryant Tips His Hat To Steve Nash
- Updated: October 25, 2014
After news of the injury broke, players and coaches around the league salute the All-Star point guard, Steve Nash, on his accomplishments of his career. One of the most meaningful came from Nash’s teammate, Kobe Bryant.
He told ESPN:
“You can control what you can control,” Bryant said before the Lakers’ final preseason game, a 93-92 loss to the Sacramento Kings on Friday night. “He did everything to get back and play at a high level. From that standpoint he should be able to sleep at night. I know I would. I can only think about that in my situation; I just tried to do everything possible to be ready, and if it wasn’t in the cards, if I couldn’t get back to being at that level, you just have to accept it and when you lay your head down you know that you did absolutely everything possible.”
Bryant admits that if in the same position, he would do the same thing. Kobe even went so far as to say that Nash can sleep well at night knowing that he has giving everything possible to return for this season.
Kobe Bryant found out about the news on Thursday following a call from general manager, Mitch Kupchak.
“It’s tough,” said Bryant, who later talked to the two-time MVP about the injury and his future. “I just asked him if he was in good spirits and he said, ‘Yeah.’ It kind of is what it is at this point. … He struggled with his back even when he was in his prime. I really don’t think it’s an age thing, it’s an injury thing. He’s had to deal with it his entire career, and it just caught up with him now.”
The decision was made after Mitch Kupchak sat down with Nash and his agent Bill Duffy.
“I’m not going to share too much,” Kupchak said when asked about the conversations that led to Nash’s decision. “A lot of that is private stuff, but I would say we had discussions at the beginning of the week. I have a pretty good relationship with [Nash] over the years. I think I talked to Steve more than the representative about the issue and I have a great relationship with Bill Duffy, his agent. In fact, Bill and I met here yesterday to make sure we’re on the same page in terms of the [news] release because it’s a sensitive kind of thing. It’s a little unusual. Something like that you normally hammer out with an agent, but because of the relationship [with Nash] I spent a lot of time with him.”
News emerged yesterday evening announcing that the Lakers will seek and file for “Disabled Player Exception,” which will allow the team to replace Nash with another player.
Kobe Bryant also said this about his teammate:
“We’ve both been playing years that we probably should not have been,” Bryant said. “Nineteen years is a very, very long time. It’s tough to look around at any industry and find anyone that’s been doing anything else for 19 years.”
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