Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers did indeed wait until Monday to make their final determination on how to respond to the torn right rotator cuff he suffered during last Wednesday's loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. As it turned out, though, the decision they came to is the one most of us expected; all that remains now is to learn whether his absence will be as long as we expect, too.
Here's Monday's news, as first tweeted by Mark Medina of the Los Angeles Daily News and subsequently confirmed by the Lakers themselves in a press release:
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Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, who injured his right shoulder in last Wednesday night's game against the Pelicans in New Orleans, was examined this morning by Dr. Neal ElAttrache of the Kerlan Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic. Dr. ElAttrache confirmed an earlier diagnosis of a torn rotator cuff, and advised Bryant to have surgery to repair the shoulder. Bryant has agreed, and surgery has been scheduled for Wednesday morning. A timeline estimate for Bryant's return will be issued following the surgery.
The team statement still leaves some wiggle room for the rage-against-the-dying-of-the-light possibility that Bryant, 36, will suit up again for the Lakers during the 2014-15 campaign, and has not suffered a season-ending injury for the third straight season. But sources told Yahoo Sports NBA columnist Adrian Wojnarowski last week that doctors' opinions shared with Bryant referred to the procedure he needs as "season-ending," and Lakers head coach Byron Scott doesn't seem to be holding out much hope for a return before mid-April:
Byron Scott on Kobe: "Now we know Kobe is probably not going to play (the rest of the year)."
— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) January 26, 2015 As our own Kelly Dwyer reminded last Thursday, a late-season shutdown for Bryant was always in the cards, but this certainly wasn't the way it had been drawn up. But while Scott had recently taken to giving his veteran top gun more rest, he did so only after some unsightly, fatigue-impacted shooting and a heavy early-season minutes-and-shots workload that seemed at least in part intended to get Bean past Michael Jordan on the all-time scoring list. There's a case to be made that Scott's decision to keep running Bryant out there, especially after being Kobe had previously informed his coach that his shoulder was bothering him, represents an abdication of duty, as suggested by ESPN Los Angeles' Baxter Holmes.
Whether you view Bryant's latest serious injury as a regrettable organizational failure to properly protect its primary talent, the latest sad but inevitable piece of evidence that not even the greatest performers in league history can ward off the ravages of time and nearly two decades of minutes forever, both or something else entirely, the fact remains that we're not going to see Kobe Bryant play basketball any more for a little while, and possibly not until next fall. (It's considered exceptionally unlikely that this will represent the end for Kobe, due in no small part to the fact that he's owed $25 million next season.) The Mamba might have had a chuckle at this latest setback, but the grim confirmation of his diagnosis certainly doesn't leave much for the rest of us to smile about.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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