Turiaf Might Need Some Development

Ronny Turiaf’s stay with the Lakers might be short-lived.

The Laker draft pick will spend about two weeks with the big club before being sent down to the Development League, Coach Phil Jackson said Saturday.

Jackson said Turiaf, who underwent heart surgery last July, needed additional experience and conditioning and probably will be assigned to the team’s Fort Worth affiliate when the Lakers begins a seven-game trip Jan. 29, their longest of the season.

“Maybe we’ll give him a chance to hang on with the team for a while,” Jackson said.

“We probably should be sending more guys down. We have all kids on this team, but right now we have a roster as such that we just don’t have the ability [to do that].

“We think that some time in the near future, March or sometime in there, [Turiaf] should probably start feeling like he could play continual action.”

Turiaf averaged 13 points and 6.3 rebounds in nine games with the CBA’s Yakama (Wash.) Sun Kings.

Players in their first or second NBA seasons are eligible to be sent to the Development League. The Lakers have five players who qualify: rookies Turiaf, Von Wafer, Devin Green and Andrew Bynum, and second-year guard Sasha Vujacic.

Players can be sent down up to three times a season.

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Is this recent stretch of games the best Kobe Bryant ever played?

“No, but it’s right up there,” Jackson said. “The best basketball Kobe played in his career was from April of 2001 to the end of the playoffs in 2001, after he came back from sitting out 11 or 10 games with an ankle injury.

“I think we won 26 out of 27 games or something like that in that period of time, maybe more even as we finished up the season and roared through the playoffs. Kobe played at a tremendous, elevated level.”