Kobe Bryant on first team practice: 'I felt like myself'
Welcome to the age of Candid Kobe, in which the aging Los Angeles Lakers superstar, once reserved and reticent and occasionally combative with the media, now freely opens up and smiles his way through interviews and shoots straight from the hip.
Bryant was in a chipper mood after the Lakers' first practice of the year on Tuesday - his first team practice in a bout 10 months - in which, as he told ESPN's Sage Steele, "we just ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, and ran. And then ran some more."
In spite of all the running, Bryant felt good. "It was one of the best practices I've been fortunate to be a part of," he said. "I felt like myself ... That's a good thing."
He also confessed to feeling the pressure that comes with knowing the end of his career is not far off.
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little nervous maybe about the end," he said. "But also extremely excited about the challenge it presents."
Asked whether he and 40-year-old teammate Steve Nash - who, unlike Bryant, has said definitively that this season will be his last - have spoken about impending retirement, Bryant said: "I'm a little more upbeat about it I think than Steve is," adding that, while he might have a little bit more time left than Nash, "I'm right around the corner ... he's just a block ahead of me at this point."
Bryant also spoke about the underdog status this year's Lakers appear to be embracing, knowing that very few fans and pundits are giving them much hope of being competitive.
"We do have a chip on our shoulder," he said. "We feel like we have a lot to prove, and most of it's to ourselves, I mean we all come here from situations where teams didn't want us, they didn't feel like we were good enough, or we'd been forgotten about. i think it's important for us to prove to ourselves that we belong."
Bryant, whose upcoming 19th season with the Lakers will match John Stockton's record for most with one franchise, plans on playing all eight of the Lakers preseason games.