Brown shows progress

Another comeback, far less publicized, took place Friday night at Staples Center.

The doors had barely swung open to the public when Kwame Brown finished a 90-minute pregame workout, bumping bodies in the post with Andrew Bynum and running sprints with injured teammate Aaron McKie.

Expected to return in mid-November, he’s aiming for next Friday’s game against Detroit. He has been out two weeks because of a bruised rotator cuff and bursitis in his right shoulder.

“It felt stronger today,” Brown said. “Certain positions had been causing pain, but they didn’t today.”

Brown struggled through most of last season, often fumbling passes in the post and hurrying his shot. But he averaged 13.6 points and 9.2 rebounds in the team’s last 13 regular-season games, then 12.9 points and 6.6 rebounds in the playoffs.

He has clearly pulled ahead of Chris Mihm as far as returning to the active roster.

Mihm is still recovering from off-season surgery after sitting out 24 of the Lakers’ last 25 games last season because of a severely sprained ankle. The team was hoping he would be back by mid-November, although that does not appear feasible.

“He has good days and he has bad days,” Lakers spokesman John Black said. “He is making progress, slowly, and we don’t want to rush him back. There is no timetable for his return.”

Mihm averaged 10.2 points and 6.3 rebounds last season.

McKie, sidelined the better part of October because of disk inflammation in his back, is not quite day to day, Black said.

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Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson were together again Friday night, back on the court for the first time this season.

After a relatively harmonious season in the wake of Jackson’s oft-critical best-selling book, they again appear to be on the same wavelength.

“Pen pals,” Jackson said Friday.

Pen pals?

“I want to be able to get ideas from him and exchange it,” Jackson said. “You really do want to have a person that’s creative and looking for other areas and avenues to work for a team. He’s always going to be doing that because Kobe’s always looking for other angles.”

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One day it will happen.

Jackson and Tim Floyd will run into each other in Los Angeles and, surprisingly, it won’t be awkward, even though Floyd replaced Jackson as the Chicago Bulls coach.

Floyd, who moved to Southern California nearly two years ago to coach USC, said Jackson “couldn’t have been better” as a friend and mentor when Floyd coached the Bulls from 1998 to 2002.

“He gave us insight because we were trying to run his offense and I kept his staff,” Floyd said. “He was very giving, and he didn’t have to be.... Unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep enough of his old players.”

With Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen having moved on, Floyd went 49-190 with the Bulls before resigning 25 games into the 2001-02 season.

Floyd said Jackson’s best two coaching jobs were probably the 1994 Bulls team that advanced to the Eastern Conference semifinals without Jordan and with last season’s Lakers, who made the playoffs while in a rebuilding mode.

“I think he’s done a great job with every team he’s ever had,” Floyd said.

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Times staff writer Ben Bolch contributed to this report.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com