Kobe Bryant sounds like someone who wants to play beyond this season — if only for a few months.
Bryant on Monday said that he still wants to be part of the team that USA Basketball sends to next year’s Rio Olympics, a tournament that theoretically could mark the end of his competitive basketball career if he retires at the conclusion of this NBA season. Bryant helped the US win gold at the 2008 Beijing Games and 2012 London Games.
“It would mean the world to me to be around those guys,” Bryant said. “I think to be able to have a chance to continue the relationship that I already have with most of those guys, talking and just kind of being around each other and understanding that this is it, it is just us being together, that would be fun.”
Photo: AP
Bryant is in his 20th season with the Los Angeles Lakers, and questions have been rampant for some time whether this NBA season is to be his last. Bryant has suggested that he is leaning in that direction, though has stopped short of making a true retirement announcement.
The notion of Bryant being on the US Olympic team started being bandied about in earnest in August, when USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo revealed that he had spoken with the five-time NBA champion — who previously said he would not play in Rio — about the potential of being on the team. The 12 players on the list for Rio is expected to be revealed in June next year.
“How I feel now, is that I feel like I can add value from a leadership perspective and a defensive perspective,” Bryant said. “I can still move extremely well defensively.”
Bryant is to turn 38 two days after the gold-medal game in Rio. He has been on five different USA Basketball national teams, with those teams combining to go 36-0 in international competition. If he is picked for Rio, he and other veterans, such as LeBron James, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony, would have a chance to become the first US men to win Olympic basketball gold three times.
“I would like to play,” Bryant said. “I think it would be awesome. A beautiful experience. I am a global kid. I grew up in Italy, I know a lot of athletes from different parts of the world, from different sports. It would be great to play in that environment.”
Bryant is the third-leading scorer in NBA history and is averaging 16.5 points per game so far this season.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later