Bryant working hard, not dwelling on Dwight

Kobe Bryant is working hard to get back on the court and not wasting any time thinking about Dwight Howard.

Bryant said on Wednesday his surgically-repaired Achilles' tendon is "progressing faster than anybody expected," though he won't start shooting again until next month.

"I could shoot right now, but you just don't trust that the tendon's holding yet," the Lakers' All-Star guard said. "Typically it's four months minimum until the tendon's holding and it's not going to overstretch."

Bryant spoke at a brief media conference at the start of his annual youth basketball camp in Santa Barbara. He said he will be on the court with the campers and walk through some drills.

"I'm not going to be able to go out there and do too much without the Lakers having a heart attack," he said.

Last week he joined the Lakers in their meeting with Howard, who eventually chose Houston instead of re-signing in Los Angeles.

Bryant said he doesn't know why Howard left.

"You think once a guy decides to go someplace else I'm going to waste my time trying to figure out why that happened?" Bryant said.

Bryant and Steve Nash sat in on a meeting with Howard and Lakers executives three days before the center decided to leave the team. Nash took Howard's rejection harder than he did, Bryant said.

"Steve's like a quintessential teammate. Steve takes that stuff to heart. I didn't really care," Bryant said.

Bryant implied Howard was not a good fit with the Lakers, who offered a contract worth about $30 million more than Houston.

"Everybody's cut differently," he said. "He has his way of leading that he feels like will be most effective and work for him. Obviously, the way we've gone about it with this organization, the leaders we've had - myself, Magic (Johnson) and Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) - we've done it a different way."

Of the Lakers' struggles during the past season, Bryant said: "It was a lot of moving pieces going around, a lot of things that happened."

He repeated a word Nash had used to characterize it.

"Nightmare is a pretty good description," Bryant said of a season that ended with a first-round sweep against San Antonio after his late-season injury.

The Lakers recently agreed to a deal with veteran center Chris Kaman. Bryant said the team needs "a couple of guys with length and the ability to cover ground at the defensive end of the floor."

(China Daily 07/12/2013 page23)