Kobe Bryant threatens to unretire if Lakers keep losing

The Los Angeles Lakers are 0-3 against some tough competition, and Kobe Bryant may be willing to help.

The Los Angeles Lakers are 0-3, as LeBron James adjusts to a new set of teammates. Slow starts for James’ new team are nothing new, but it’s pretty clear the Lakers are a flawed team and making the playoffs in the deep Western Conference will be tough. Kobe Bryant is settling into retirement, with multiple things going on, so any idea he’ll pull a Michael Jordan and unretire is unlikely.

Lakers’ fans would certainly love to see the return of the “Black Mamba”, even it’s a dream scenario. James will not be able to get away from comparisons to Bryant for as long as he’s a Laker, and his every step or mistake will have the qualifier “Kobe would (or wouldn’t have) done that” from fans and the hot-take offerers in the media.

Bryant was on Jimmy Kimmel Live Tuesday night. Kimmel pointed to the Lakers’ current losing streak, asking Bryant how many in a row the team would have to lose before he’d think about coming back to play for the team

Bryant said if the Lakers went 0-5 he’d think about unretiring. He was pretty clearly (?) joking, but with Bryant nothing should be totally ruled out.

The Lakers play the Phoenix Suns on the road Wednesday night, so there’s a good chance they’ll put a mark in the win column and render Bryant’s tongue-in-cheek declaration moot. But after that the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Timberwolves are on the schedule, so a loss to the Suns puts an 0-6 start on the radar.

As much as it would be cool to see Bryant put on a Lakers’ uniform again, the physically broken down shell of himself he was over his final couple seasons can’t be forgotten. No one really wants to see that diminished player again, even though Bryant had to be joking about the threshold where he’d think about unretiring.