Kobe Bryant is very excited about teaming up with Steve Nash, who he thinks will make his life on the court a lot easier, and improve his chances at winning a sixth championship. Bryant – whose monster deal with the Lakers expires in 2014 — was asked to put a number on how much longer he thinks he’ll be in the NBA. From SRI (via ESPN Radio):
“How he feels about playing with Steve Nash and not having the ball in his hands as much: ‘I absolutely love it. He puts me in my original form which is that of a finisher. That’s what I do best and in the past I’ve kind of had to orchestrate the offense and make sure guys are in the right places and facilitate and score and do both and kind of switch hats quarter to quarter and sometimes minute to minute and now I don’t have to. That’s what he does, that’s what he is phenomenal at and that is what he is best at. Me, I just get to finish plays.’ How many prime years he feels he has left in the NBA: ‘As many as it takes I guess. I don’t know. I think about it and the thing is you want to continue to play because you love the game. You obviously want to win and that’s why you play the season is to win a championship. In terms of how many years I have left? I don’t know. Three maybe four, but I don’t know if I want to play that long. This will be 17 coming up and man that’s a long time, that’s more than half of my life.’
What he thinks of the Lakers chances of a championship now that they have Nash: ‘We have a much better chance obviously. We’ve kind of increased our chances by bringing Steve in. Last year was a tough year. There were a lot of inconsistencies and we were still trying to figure out what we wanted to do offensively. Even in the playoffs we kept adjusting things schematically so as a result there was a lot of uncertainty and indecision down the stretch. Those are things that we will still have to figure out and we will figure those things out this summer and probably into next season. If we do that I like our chances to win the whole thing.’ How much fun it will be to play with Nash: ‘It’s going to definitely be fun for me because I get to finally just catch and shoot as opposed to dribbling and kicking it, dribbling some more and shooting so that’s just going to be fun because I’m not going to have to work that hard to get shots anymore. Bringing him here kind of pumps a new life into the team and the city is buzzing because of it and it’s such a great energy.’â€
