Bryant: Slump Is ‘No Biggie’

Kobe Bryant re-entered public life Friday night, 40 minutes before the Lakers would play the Clippers, nearly four days after deciding reporters were one more thing for which he had no time, or interest.

For the record, he said, he wasn’t mad, or disgusted, or whatever.

“I figured you guys would try to read into it,” he said, smiling. “I took some days off from you guys. I don’t want to look at you guys’ faces every day. I took some days off. If you guys can’t stand looking at me sometimes, you ought to send somebody else in here.

“I think you guys know me well enough to know that that type of stuff doesn’t bother me at all.”

Bryant was playful, over his sinus infection, and apparently not at all concerned about a shooting stroke that deserted him for the better part of two weeks. The ball came out of his hand differently for a time, part of the reason he was 16 for 46 from the floor in the two Lakers losses, and 31 for 84 in four games before the Clippers.

“I feel good. I feel great,” he said. “Shooting is shooting. You miss shots sometimes.”

In the Lakers’ first two-game losing streak in nine months, the chicken-and-egg conundrum was Kobe’s game or the Laker offense, and about which runs which. Bryant said the offense came first.

“Being here, through the past few years, I think I just learned to play in the system,” he said. “I really hold back from going out and going one on one and stuff like that, which is something I don’t want to do at all. So the shot’s not falling, it’s really no biggie.

“We’re in the process right now of improving, believe it or not. I think one of the things that we’ve learned is that you have to take a step back sometimes, or two steps sometimes, to take a step forward. It’s all part of the process of playing 82 games.”