YAYsports! NBA

Somehow we get the feeling that every day between now and Tuesday’s Lakers season opener, there’s going to be a fluctuation between “YES” and “NO” on the status of Kobe Bryant playing.

Today’s rating is “questionable to doubtful” according to the Los Angeles Times, but that’s hardly the most disturbing news coming out of the building known in many places as “Staples Center”.

Turns out that key free agent pickup Vlad Radmanovic is playing with a torn ligament in his shooting hand, and it’s not something that’s getting better without surgery.

“It’s frustrating,” Radmanovic said. “Especially as a shooter, your right hand is your biggest weapon. I’ll just have to find different ways to score and help this team win.”

He could rest the hand for a month and probably feel better, but not necessarily heal it.

“I could be out four weeks and not do anything and come back and get contact and get the same thing again,” Radmanovic said. “I would just waste four weeks.”

This sucks if you’re a Laker fan, because as much as Vlad can talk about finding other ways to score, he really doesn’t have all that many other ways to score.

Add in the Kwame Brown and Chris Mihm injuries, and a Kobe-less Laker team consists of a useless Vlad, Luke Walton, Andrew Bynum, a rookie point guard, an old dude, a French guy, an ex-Piston, Brian Cook, Smush Parker’s grillz, and that other foreign guard.

Of course, nobody needs to worry about Kobe coming back strong - even without his explosiveness all the way at 100%, he’s gonna find a way. What if he doesn’t come back for 10 games and the Lakers start 0-15, though?

That’s not even possible, yet sounds entirely realistic.

(BTW if Kobe doesn’t play Tuesday night, it’s going to seriously cripple our enjoyment of opening night, so someone pass that on to him for us.)