Kobe Wants West Back w/Lakers

[nrdstrm]

He has been interviewed a few times now saying everything from "I'll ask to be traded if we don't get him" to "I would love for him to be a part of this," Bryant said. "But it's not something where I demand he comes here. All I can do is offer my thoughts. I love being a Laker. I want to retire a Laker. I want to fix this thing, or at least help any way I can."...
BTW...This was confirmed by Jim Hill of Channel 2 news...

On the Jerry West side, he said something to the effect that he is focused on where he is now, but come July First "I am a lifetime Laker, so we will see what happens"...

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-lakers28may28,1,4927854.story?coll=la-headlines-sports&ctrack=1&cset=true

"My feeling on Jerry West is I trust him completely," Bryant said. "I don't want to get into people believing me to be bashing anybody. Mitch is a great guy. All I can go by is what has happened with this team the last two years, and I know Jerry West is a guy who's great at what he does.

"He wants to win and he wants to win right now. I can roll with that, even if we don't have the complete turnaround we're hoping to have this summer. Just having him back in the nucleus will help."

**EDIT** Here is the first article where the source claims Kobe would want to be traded if West did not come back...
http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/lakers/la-sp-plaschke27may27,0,2689631.column?track=mostviewed-storylevel

[Sazar]

I think all the good players in the league may be taking a long, hard look at the Kevin Garnett situation and thinking about their own legacies.

Selfish as it sounds for these multi-millionaires, they generate FAR more revenue for the league, advertisers and their teams through merchandising and ticket sales for basically driving their bodies into the ground. Wanting a better reward than what Garnett has had is not such a bad thing. And Mitch has basically screwed things up some.

[nrdstrm]

Yep...Mitch really screwed things up...I really hope Jerry Bus just says screw it and hires West for $8-10 Mil and then spends the money to go past the luxury tax and aquires some decent players to build around Kobe, or he will want to go...