Good News, Bad News
The local ragsheet reported today that Kobe will not have surgery on the injured pinkie of his shooting hand. For those of you who don't recall, Kobe's been playing with this injury since last season. My understanding is that he has some bone fragments lose in soft tissue, which makes doing much of anything with the hand awkward and difficult.
To Kobe's great credit, he and the Laker's medical staff developed a taping scheme where he's still able to shoot and dribble. His ball handling may not be quite what it was, but his overall game has not suffered for it. In fact, you can argue that it may actually have helped his game because it's forced Kobe to pass when in times past he might well have hot-dogged it. Like the knee injury to Andrew Bynum that resulted in Pau Gasol coming to the Lakers, this problem may actually benefit the Lakers in the long run.
Apparently, healing up from surgery will take 12 weeks. Lakers training camp is scheduled to begin this year on Sept. 27. So, Kobe has elected to put off the surgery until next post-season. Let's just hope it doesn't get worse. My fear is that he may have to leave in the middle (or God forbid, towards the end) of the season to get it repaired.
As to young Andrew Bynum, by all accounts he's fully recovered from his knee surgery. According to the press conference he gave last week, and the reports of those who have watched him scrimmage, he is back to 100%. The knee is strong, he can run and cut on it, and his mobility is back to normal. Better still, he has spent much of his "down time" working on strength training. He looks much bigger and stronger in the chest, shoulders and arms, but without being over-pumped. This is good, because he's going to need that upper body strength as the entire league decides to hang all over him and hack him mercilessly.
Let's just hope he's worked on his free-throwing, too. He's already a better free thrower than The Big Jerkoff has ever been or ever will be, but I can foresee Andrew spending a lot of time at the line...
As a final note, the big man gave out his XBOX handle during a recent TV interview. He's an avid HALO 3 fan, which makes him not just cool, but totally cool in my book.