Filed Under » Kobe Bryant

Lakers head coach Mike D'Antoni burned his final timeout with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of Los Angeles' opening round playoff series against the Spurs. Why? To read his players a tweet.

"Guy, guys. Gather around and listen up," said D'Antoni, squatting down in front of his players while holding his iPhone. "'"Pau, get ur ass on the block and don't move till u get it.' Want to know who said that? Kobe. Kobe said it on Twitter. Now, Pau, get out there and do it, okay?"

D'Antoni then called his team back before player resumed.

"Oh, and guys?" he said. "I forgot. Hashtag: realtalk."

Kobe Bryant vowed in a rambling, barely coherent Facebook posting at 4 a.m. this morning that he will suit up for the Lakers at quarterback for Week 1 of the NFL season.

"My man rg3 you do it i do it. It a bet dog," read part of Bryant's post, written just days after surgery to repair a torn Achilles. "My thrwing arm iz not hurt i just wil b more of a packet qb. never been mor motvated to win Supr bowel."

Bryant then went on to write several hundred barely lucid words about spiders that he claims are living inside his eyelids, saying eyelashes are "jus spider hands sticking out ur face. LOL. No lol: FEAR. I'd fight a bear b4 a damn spidr. Eylid spidrs!!! When u blink its them biting yor eyes."

Several minutes later, Bryant took to Twitter and tried to order a sandwich: "Hello. Turkey on rye plz .. no eyelid spiders on the side .., nEver them."

Lakers star Kobe Bryant was expected to be out indefinitely with a severely sprained left ankle, but the team announced today that he will play tomorrow after cutting the offending body part from his body.

"Before our shoot-around this morning, Kobe cut out his left ankle using trainer's tape scissors. No anesthetic," said head coach Mike D'Antoni. "It was pretty amazing to see. His will to win is unparalleled."

With the ankle bone and the surrounding tissue cut away, Bryant then reattached his left foot to the bottom of his fibula using a shoelace for stitches. He then stood up and addressed his teammates.

"Look at this!" Kobe commanded, holding the chunk of bone and flesh that was his ankle. "This was my ankle. It was not committed to winning. It tried to stop me from achieving my goal of winning a championship. So I cut it out. Let that be a lesson to all of you."

"I was really inspired," said forward Pau Gasol, while vomiting. "Also, I'm scared for my life. Playing with a psychopath is both inspirational and terrifying."

Michael Jordan said in an interview with NBA TV yesterday that, if given a choice, he would take Adam Morrison over Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

Widely considered the greatest player of all-time, Jordan said it would be a tough choice between the trio. However, Morrison's combination of rings and youth would tip the scales in his favor.

"Kobe has five titles and that's impressive, but he's getting a little long in the tooth," said Jordan. "LeBron is a lot younger, but he only has one. I don't really like either choice. What I like is Adam Morrison. He has two championship rings and is just as young as LeBron. Easy choice if you break it down. He's a good mix of Kobe and LeBron."

Jordan took Morrison with the 3rd overall pick in the 2006 NBA Draft, just one of the many disastrous player personnel moves he has made in his post-playing career — and one which contributed to the state the Charlotte Bobcats are in today.

But Jordan scoffs at any suggestions that picking Morrison, who last played in the Turkish League in 2012 and left the team due to lack of playing time, was a mistake.

"I don't make mistakes. Never have, never will," said Jordan. "And you saying I did makes you look stupid. Adam has two championships rings. More than LeBron. More than Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley. More than John Stockton and Karl Malone. As many as Hakeem Olajuwon. I don't think I need to go on … but I will. Adam has played for four different teams in three different countries. He's gotten tryouts with two other teams. If he's so terrible, why do so many teams consider him? Huh, dumbass?"

Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant had his fourth consecutive game of nine or more assists Wednesday night. The new pass-first Bryant says his facilitating game, which had led to three wins in a row, has come thanks to a change in mindset.

"Look, it's no secret that I have long preferred to take a lot of shots," said Bryant. "But who says I always have to shoot at the basket?"

Lakers head coach Mike D'Antoni said he pulled Bryant aside last week and pitched him on changing his approach.

"I put my hands together and made a circle and asked Kobe: 'What do you see?'" said D'Antoni. "He said: 'You making a circle with your hands for some reason. Why are you wasting my time?' And then before he walked away I said: 'What if I told you this was a tiny basketball hoop you could shoot at?' His eyes immediately brightened."

D'Antoni then immediately held a practice with an enthusiastic Bryant in which Steve Nash, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard and the rest of the Lakers made their hands into little hoops. "Shoot, Kobe, shoot!" D'Antoni implored. "Put it up every time! Live your dream!"

It was the best Laker practice of the year.

"I really liked shooting at the hand hoops," says Bryant. "My field goal percentage really went up. The hand hoops kind of catch my shots even if they're a little off target. The rim never does that. It's pretty neat."

Lakers star Kobe Bryant claims teammate Pau Gasol was not brutally murdered and, in fact, immediately flew home to Spain following Los Angeles' season-ending loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

"Yeah, I've heard the crazy rumors, too," said Bryant, wiping blood off of his face with a towel while speaking to Oklahoma City police. "I guess because a few people claim they heard screams and saw me attacking Pau with an ax? I don't know. People say crazy things. But, no, right after the game ended, Pau headed to the airport and flew home. He said he was going there forever and would never be back."

Bryant then picked up his blood-soaked axe and held it menacingly in the direction of his teammates: "Didn't Pau say that, guys," Bryant said to them. "Tell the good officers."

Bryant's Lakers teammate, crying and in shock, nodded their heads in agreement.