Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant is not fully recovered from his left sprained ankle: NBA Update
The Los Angeles Lakers have qualified into the second round of play-offs, but their guard Kobe Bryant is not fully recovered from his left sprained ankle. The Lakers are all set to face the Dallas Mavericks in their best-of-seven of the second round Western Conference semi-finals while they are still uncertain about Kobe’s sprained ankle.
The Lakers’ head Coach, Phil Jackson, also stated regarding Kobe Bryant’s state of health when he said, “It still affects him a lot; This is not going to go away anytime soon so we're just going to have to be close to what he's doing and monitor it a lot. He'll have a limited amount of practice time and it's something he'll have to do. It's tender to the touch still; He's still limping when he walks. It's a limited amount of improvement.”
The Lakers’ superstar, Bryant is receiving extra-care from his team doctors and other medical on his sprained ankle as he is also very optimistic about his ankle and said in a statement, “I'm fine; I finished off Game 4 fine, played Game 5 fine and Game 6 fine.”
Bryant suffered this ankle injury against the New Orleans Hornets in National Basketball Association (NBA) first rounds’ play-off Game 4 on Sunday night at the New Orleans Arena in New Orleans.
Since then, he has been playing even with more aggression and performing very well. Despite of his injury, Bryant’s averaged remained 22.5 points, 3.70 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game in the first round.
Bryant has performed consistently and proved his brilliance in every match. He scored stunning 34 points in a very first match against the Hornets and continued his great run in all other four matches scoring 135 points in total in the first round.
Now the big match-up is around the corner when the mighty Lakers will take on the Dallas Mavericks in the next round. The head-to-head record between these two giants is almost same. Despite of the fact that the Lakers have won two matches out of three games they played each other in the regular season, but the Mavericks hold the best road record in the league with 28-13.
The Dallas Mavericks came into the play-offs as the third-seeded team from the Western Conference and overpowered the Portland Trail Blazers with 4-2 in their first round best-of seven match-up.
On the other hand the Los Angeles Lakers have defeated the New Orleans Hornets 4-2 and advanced through to the next round. The first game of the second round is scheduled on Monday night at the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.
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