Jackson still thinks Bryant staying

While recovering from hip surgery at home, Lakers Coach Phil Jackson weighed in Monday on the latest movement in the Kobe Bryant ordeal, sounding a positive note for Bryant’s future with the team.

Jackson, who had hip-replacement surgery last Tuesday, has spoken with Bryant numerous times since the nine-time All-Star demanded a trade May 30, an action Bryant reiterated last Friday in a meeting with team owner Jerry Buss.

“He’s made a decision that he feels justified to hold -- one that I’ve questioned -- that he has reasons to leave the Lakers,” Jackson wrote Monday in a brief e-mail to The Times. “However, it’s my unshakeable feeling that Kobe will be a Laker next October ... when training camp opens.”

Bryant credited Jackson as being a voice of reason during Bryant’s now-infamous day of seemingly contradictory talk-radio and newspaper interviews on May 30. Bryant said he wanted to be traded on a talk-radio show early that day but appeared to leave wiggle room for remaining with the Lakers on subsequent radio shows. Then, later in the day, he told The Times that he indeed wanted to be traded.

Also that day, Bryant said Jackson offered some soothing early-afternoon words as they discussed a passage in a recent article by The Times that referred to a Lakers “insider” who blamed Bryant for the departure of Shaquille O’Neal in 2004.

Jackson, 61, is expected to recover within a few weeks from his second hip-replacement surgery and will attend Basketball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in September in Springfield, Mass.

Jackson had his right hip replaced last October.

Jackson has one year left on a three-year, $30-million contract and on Monday referred a question on a possible contract extension to an interview he granted in April.

“Whatever I said then stands today,” Jackson wrote.

In the April interview, Jackson said there were “a bunch of things that go into it -- how we move forward as a team.”

“Personally, as an owner, does [Buss] really want to spend the kind of money he’s spending on me to have a .500 team? We want to do better than that, by far. How do we go about readjusting to make sure that something that happened this year doesn’t happen again in the future?”

Jackson said at the time that his health was not a concern, although he indicated Monday that he wanted to be able to “coach up to my standards.”

The Lakers finished 42-40 last season and lost to Phoenix in the first round of the playoffs for a second consecutive season.

mike.bresnahan@latimes.com