Shaquille O'Neal continues to show Kobe Bryant the love. Less than a month after hosting Bryant on his podcast, O'Neal is now telling his former teammate to keep playing beyond 2016.
Shaquille O’Neal doesn’t think Kobe Bryant should retire yet
“If you still got something, you should go because once it’s done you can’t get it back.”
Eliot J. Schechter/Getty Images
“If you still got something, you should go because once it’s done you can’t get it back,” O’Neal said to John Reid of the New Orleans Times-Picayune on Friday. “If I hadn’t got hurt I would have went on and played my last season to try and break Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring record.
“But it’s different for a guard because they got control --‘I’m going to shoot this time.’ For big guys, it is kind of hard. You’ve got to labor down.”
The comment comes on the heels of Bryant being cleared to participate in all basketball activities, news which was reported last week by Bleacher Report's Kevin Ding. Bryant, who tore the rotator cuff in his right shoulder last January, is expected to join the Lakers for the opening of training camp at the end of September. He will be placed on a minutes limit.
This season will be Bryant’s 20th in the NBA. In August the 37-year-old guard told Yahoo! Sports that it could be his last.
“We haven’t set anything in stone and I’ve talked about it before,” Bryant said then. “But could this be the last (season)? Absolutely. It’s tough to decide. It’s really tough to make those types of decisions. Players I have spoken to say, ‘Kobe you will know.’”
“I’m making this very simple,” he continued. “Either I like playing the game and going through this process or I don’t. I try to strip it down to the simplest form. Either I like playing some more or I don’t. But I think that decision needs to be made after the season. It’s hard to make a decision like that before the season.”
The two-year, $48 million contract extension Bryant signed in 2013 is set to expire following the 2015-16 season. In May, Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak said he expects this season to be Bryant’s final one in the league.
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