Dwight Howard might not make his Los
Angeles Lakers debut in the team's Oct. 30 season-opener against the Dallas
Mavericks after all. Howard is now hopeful he can return from back surgery
earlier than expected and possibly play in the preseason.
"Hopefully, I will be back for some
preseason games," Howard said following the Lakers' first practice on Monday. "I
think we are going to need it for chemistry and all that stuff."
When asked if his optimism was reason to
think he would definitely play on opening night, Howard was more cautious with
his words.
"All I know is we had a great practice
today," he said. "I don't know the date when I will return. But I'm looking
forward to tomorrow's practice to see how my body feels when I wake up. We can
only go by time right now and how I feel after practice. We are not in a rush.
These guys need me for the whole season."
Howard had been playing one-on-one games
against assistant coaches Darvin Ham and Chuck Person prior to the start of
training camp. Lakers coach Mike Brown said Howard took part in the majority of
Tuesday's lengthy practice that lasted about four hours, but Howard was given a
break during a drill to give his feet a rest. The Lakers engaged in light work
on the Princeton offense with Howard taking part in each first-team exercise.
Howard said he had no setbacks.
The Lakers play their first preseason
game Sunday against the Golden State Warriors in Fresno, Calif. Howard isn't
expected to be in uniform. But even if Howard doesn't play in the preseason, the
Lakers still have 23 practices scheduled before the start of the season, giving
him and Steve Nash time to build chemistry with their new teammates.
"As long as he's in practice and able to
go through things offensively, go through our system and stuff like that, I
don't think it will be an issue," Bryant said.
Lakers assistant coach Eddie Jordan spent
time at the end of practice working with the players on implementing the
Princeton offense. The Lakers averaged 97.3 points per game last season, a drop
of more than four points per game from what they averaged in the 2010-11 season
while running Phil Jackson's triangle offense.
Bryant, who has met with Brown and Jordan
about the offense, is excited about the change.
"The more talent you have, the more
imperative it is to have an equal opportunity system where you let the flow of
the game determine which shots come for me," Bryant said. "You just work to get
the best shot possible and really just read the defense."
President Barack Obama sees the
presidential contest as a clutch moment in his favorite sport - the fourth
quarter of a taut basketball game.
Fundraising with the help of current and
former National Basketball Association stars, Obama told a small group of donors
gathered Wednesday night at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center that the current
campaign is like the final minutes of a basketball contest with his team up by a
few points.
''But the other side is coming strong,''
Obama said. ''And they play a little dirty. We've got a few folks on our team in
foul trouble. We have a couple of injuries. And I believe they have one last run
in them.''
Obama raised $3 million with the help of
the players, who included former Chicago Bulls player Michael Jordan and former
New York Knicks Walt Frazier and Bill Bradley. NBA Commissioner David Stern also
was there.
Invoking Jordan's competitive nature,
Obama concluded, ''If you have seven minutes to go and you have a little bit of
a lead, that's when you put them away.''
The players were part a daylong
fundraiser. Earlier, former and current players participated in a
$250-per-person autograph session and in a skills camp priced at $5,000 for two
people.
''It is very rare that I come to an event
where I'm like the fifth or sixth most interesting person,'' Obama joked at the
Lincoln Center dinner.
Later, Obama changed out of his dark suit
to shoot baskets with some of the players out of sight of the press. Obama, an
avid basketball fan and a player, made a splash during his 2008 campaign by
sinking a 3-point shot while visiting troops in Kuwait. His most recent
star-studded game, also played in private, featured actors George Clooney and
Tobey Maguire.
Give Kobe Bryant credit. The guy doesn’t
lack confidence — and he and the rest of the U.S. men’s basketball team will
carry plety of it to London for the Olympics.
Asked how the 2012 Olympic roster would
match up with the original 1992 “Dream Team,” Bryant made a bold
statement.
“Well, just from a basketball standpoint,
they obviously have a lot more size than we do — you know, with (David) Robinson
and (Patrick) Ewing and (Karl) Malone and those guys,” Bryant told Yahoo Sports
at Team USA’s training camp in Las Vegas earlier this week. “But they were also
— some of those wing players — were also a lot older, at kind of the end of
their careers. We have just a bunch of young racehorses, guys that are eager to
compete.
“So I don’t know. It’d be a tough one,
but I think we’d pull it out.”
“I absolutely laughed,” Michael Jordan told the
Associated Press when asked how he responded to Bryant’s assertion.
“For him to compare those two teams is
not one of the smarter things he ever could have done.”
Of course, Jordan has never had a hubris
deficiency either. And his response before a celebrity golf tournament in
Charlotte shows he hasn’t lost anything in that department.
“Most of us were in the prime of our
careers, at a point where athleticisim doesn’t really matter. You have to know
how to play the game, ” said Jordan, who was quick to note he was 29 at the 1992
Olympics. At 33, Bryant is the oldest player on the 2012 team.
When asked if his optimism was reason to
think he would definitely play on opening night, Howard was more cautious with
his words.