Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant Should Sit Out Back-To-Back Games This Season

By Anthony F. Irwin @AnthonyIrwinNBA on October 16, 2014

Laugh as we will at Steve Nash’s latest injury, but Kobe Bryant is much closer in age than he is to Nash’s replacement, Jeremy Lin. Here’s a stat for those of you cursing at ESPN for ranking him 40th among NBA players — as injury-prone as we view Nash, he nearly had triple (15) as many games as Kobe (six) last season. For that reason alone, Bryant should sit out the second ends of back-to-back games this year.

Fortunately, Kobe and Los Angeles Lakers head coach Byron Scott seem on the same page in this respect. Scott even went so far as to say when he and Bryant discussed how many minutes he should play, Kobe’s estimation was lower than his. If Kobe understands the limits father time has placed on him, the decision to sit will be easier than it was when Mike D’Antoni literally couldn’t pull Kobe from games.

We all know how that ended. Kobe played extreme minutes to drag an already injury-riddled Lakers team to the playoffs and, in the process, blew out his achilles – the first of back-to-back season-ending injuries.

The Lakers have 14 sets of back-to-back games this year – one of which occurs the first and second nights of the season. Kobe should be fresh enough to play that game, so if he skips the remainder of such situations, he’d only miss 13 games. Of course, should the Lakers find themselves in the middle of an unexpected playoff run, that plan becomes harder to stick to, but that can be figured out when that time comes.

One thing has stuck out to me over anything else from this preseason: Kobe Bryant’s patience. He’s been open to mentoring teammates; he’s standing behind Scott as the leader of this team; he’s even been honest about his own limitations. It’s been absolutely astounding. That being said, it’s a lot easier to maintain that way of thinking now, only a few games into the preseason. It’s pivotal that, if and when Kobe’s patience wears thin, he and Scott stick to the plan of sitting out games so that, if the Lakers do find themselves in the playoff hunt, Kobe can be fresh enough to get them in.

Anthony F. Irwin is an NBA, NFL, MLB and NCAA Football contributor for www.Rantsports.com. Follow him on Twitter, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google. Send him an email at .