Joel Lorenzi

With Kobe, I can tell you their behavioral patterns with the way they've treated us.

I mean, first of all, like you said, it's the same calf he injured in August.

They kept him out three months.

First 11 games of the season, his entire training camp, everything.

So he already was kind of in this weird period they would describe as, hey, this is his training camp, getting thrown into the fire in the regular season, trying to make this thing work.

They need so many bodies.

They need as much offensive firepower as they can get, frankly, as many ball handlers as they can have.

And they have many.

Many that are just average.

So this was already...

weirdest period for Kobe and then that Milwaukee game, the second half of a back-to-back, that was the first back-to-back he's played since he came back.

And so we know that they've kind of slow-footed this and they weren't playing them in back-to-backs for a while and they want to be

more cautious than not because especially not just with his now history, he's also injured the other calf in this season.

But also, like, the league-wide trend of where the calf stuff is going and, you know, whether the data supports that it's loosely connected to the Achilles stuff.

Like, they just want to be cautious.

And this is a guy, too, that...

If they are eventually going to shop him, I don't know how likely it is.

If they are eventually going to finally act on the asset that he is, this is a crucial time.

You've got five, six weeks left into the trade deadline.

So I imagine they'll be as cautious as ever with this injury now.