Page 6 January 2, 2014 By Adam Serrao If you’re a Los Angeles sports fan like I am, then you must have found it just as painful to watch the two most popular teams in Los Angeles play sports lately. When I say painful, I mean it. The players on both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Dodgers just can’t stay healthy lately. The “Boys in Blue” seemed to look more like the “Boys in Black and Blue” over their past two seasons of play and with the Lakers…well, the unthinkable has happened. Kobe Bryant has met his match. No, it’s not LeBron James and no, Michael Jordan hasn’t resurrected his career again to make a comeback. It is Father Time who has walked right up to Kobe and smacked him in the face. Or the Achilles... Perhaps it is fitting or ironic even that one of the toughest, most durable players to ever set foot on an NBA court is being hampered by a tendon called Achilles. As invulnerable as Kobe has always seemed to those who have watched him play here in L.A., this injury may be the one that slowly does him in. With time no longer on his side, the riveting question has now become do you sit Kobe Bryant out for the rest of this year, or play him as soon as he returns from his latest injury. Kobe’s latest injury is in fact not his Achilles tendon tear. Bryant returned from that injury To Sit Or Not To Sit rather successfully and was beginning to look a lot better in his sixth game of the season against the Memphis Grizzlies when he suddenly broke a bone in his knee. Initially, Kobe tried to play through it like he always does and actually finished the game without pause. In the following days, however, the pain would not subsist. Kobe took an MRI, learned that he had broken a bone and would be back watching from the sidelines for a minimum of six weeks. “You hate it for Kobe,” Lakers head coach Mike D’Antoni said. “He’s worked so hard to get back.” Now, Kobe will have to begin that work once again, but for just how long? The timetable for Bryant’s return is in fact six weeks and knowing Kobe, he’ll try to make it back before that amount of time. But maybe, just maybe, the Lakers should think about sitting him out for the rest of the season. Sure, the two-year, $48.5 million contract that Bryant just signed to make him the wealthiest athlete in the game of basketball certainly does not support that point. But signing Kobe to that contract was more of a symbol than anything else--a reward, if you will, for 17 years of dedication, hard work and five championship rings. Whether Kobe plays this year or not, the Lakers are not going to win a championship let alone get out of the first round of the playoffs. If Kobe does return in six weeks, it will most likely come right after the All-Star break in a game against his old pal Dwight Howard and the Houston Rockets. That would mean that Bryant will have missed right around 30 games, give or take a couple, and that the Lakers will most likely be well out of playoff contention. Sure, that’s speculation, but following Bryant’s injury, the Lakers quickly dropped two of their first three without the superstar, losing to Golden State by 19 points and Phoenix by 27. Aside from Jordan Farmar’s return from injury, things do not look to be on the up and up for the Lake Show. The Lakers are, of course, always better to watch when Kobe Bryant is on the court. He is the face of the franchise and the man who brings in the money for the Lakers. For that reason and that reason alone, management would most likely much rather have him competing and out there on the court. He drives ratings and he drives sales. Unfortunately, Bryant cannot do that if he is injured. That’s why it will be in the best interest for the Lakers to sideline Bryant for the rest of the season, have him heal his injuries and come back next season when he is able to have a training camp and get himself into basketball condition. As it stands, Bryant cannot train with the injuries that he currently has. That means that if and when he tries to return from his latest injury, he will need at least another few weeks to get back into the basketball condition that has sustained his career for as long as it is currently tenured. Knowing Bryant, however, he will believe that he is already in that kind of shape, thus injuring himself even further and jeopardizing his entire career. If he is capable, there is no way that Kobe will ever agree to sit on the sideline when he could instead be contributing to his team. That being said, expect to see Bryant back in purple and gold come mid-February. But perhaps the smart, yet unpopular decision would be for Bryant to take it easy this year. Bottom line, this team as it is currently constructed is not a contender for the title. Bryant’s legacy will be about championships won--not games played or minutes logged. A lot of things can change in a year, especially with a free agent class and draft class like the ones that will arrive next season. Sitting out the remainder of the season can both enhance the longevity of Bryant’s career and help him win that much-coveted sixth championship trophy that he longs oh-so deeply for. At a time like this, it is in the Lakers’ and Kobe’s best interest to focus on the future. 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