Some talk, some action

BAKERSFIELD -- A week had come and gone, and Kobe Bryant finally spoke at length, with no publicists to break it up, no training rooms in which to loiter, no curb-side cars in which to climb.

He got off the team bus, and boarded it again a few hours later, still a member of the Lakers after they defeated the Seattle SuperSonics, 126-106, in an exhibition game Thursday at an undeniably sparse Rabobank Arena.

He wasn’t in a hurry when he spoke to reporters before tip-off, throwing in a few laughs over a seven-minute span that belied how he felt most of the last week.

He wants to leave the Lakers, but, here’s where tension creeps into the picture, the Lakers are reluctant to trade him without a knockout offer and are still hoping for a peaceful resolution, numerous team sources said Thursday.

It has left Bryant with an air of resignation, perhaps even a bizarre twist of tranquillity, even though he admitted in a brief Tuesday interview that Jerry Buss’ comments last week “caught me off guard a little bit.”

Those remarks, coupled with a sore knee, led Bryant to ditch the probing questions of the media for the better part of a week. He smiled sheepishly when asked about it Thursday.

“Why do I need to bang my head up against a wall?” he said. “There’s nothing much for me to say. Everybody was wondering if I cleaned out my locker and I told you guys I didn’t do that and there was really nothing else for me to say after that.”

When asked whether he was still dedicated to the Lakers, he answered in a low, steady voice, expanding upon his “strap it up” analogy from Tuesday’s interview.

“When I’m here, wherever I’m at, I’m ready to go,” he said. “It’s not my job to be worried about what management is doing. I voiced my frustrations over the summer and I just leave it there.”

A lot is left to be seen over the coming days, weeks, months.

The Lakers are slowly returning to health -- Kwame Brown started against Seattle and Lamar Odom was seen shooting around before the game -- but whether Bryant is along for the ride is the obvious question.

If it does come to a trade, it would not be that simple to move a player who is owed $88.6 million over the next four seasons, has a trade kicker of $9.6 million (to be absorbed over a two-year span by the team that traded for him), and holds the league’s only no-trade clause, although Bryant could waive it if he considered his destination to be palatable.

Either way, he maintained Thursday that he prepared for this season the same way he had his previous 11 in the pros.

“Yeah. This is no different to me,” he said. “It’s easy when you don’t pay attention to all that [outside] stuff. Going to USA Basketball helped out a lot. You just remember how fun basketball is. You just play the game. You don’t think about anything else.

“And when I came back here, I made it a point not to listen to the media or watch TV and that stuff and just focus on the game. It helps out a lot.”

Though the Lakers looked substantially better Thursday than they did in two losses last week to Golden State, the fans weren’t as prevalent here as in the past. The stentorian voice of public-address announcer Lawrence Tanter could be heard in almost every corner of an arena that used to be teeming with energy whenever the Lakers wandered through here in past exhibition seasons.

Just the same, Bryant was greeted warmly when he was introduced, and the fans broke out the familiar “Ko-be, Ko-be” chant not long after he dunked an alley-oop pass from Ronny Turiaf in the third quarter. Shortly after that came the first “M-V-P, M-V-P” chorus of the season.

He finished with 20 points, five rebounds and four assists in 18 minutes. He left for good with 3:07 remaining in the third quarter.

Brian Cook and Andrew Bynum each had 19 points in reserve roles. Brown, in his first game action since undergoing shoulder and ankle surgeries, had one point and four rebounds in nine minutes.

Odom remained noncommittal about a timetable for his return from off-season shoulder surgery. “Hopefully I can play the next game,” he said. “If not, then the next game after that. If not, the next one after that. And so on.” . . . Chris Mihm received seven stitches in his upper lip after being elbowed by Brown in practice Wednesday. “I was guarding him and he decided to make a move through my face,” Mihm said, trying very hard not to smile. . . . Bryant, on Sonics rookie Kevin Durant, who had 19 points Thursday: “He’s the longest kid I’ve ever seen in my life. I used to think Tayshaun Prince was long. This guy’s longer.”

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mike.bresnahan@latimes.com