“That’s great,” Nash said on Friday. “You love it when your best player has that confidence and that challenge. In a way, he’s put it out for us to go get now.”

Bryant said in an interview with Sports Illustrated that he is certain the struggling Lakers will make the playoffs. The 15-time All-Star also claimed he has “no fear” of any potential postseason opponent in the competitive Western Conference.

“It’s not a question of if we make the playoffs. We will,” Bryant told Sports Illustrated. “And when we get there, I have no fear of anyone — Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Denver … whoever. I have zero nervousness about that.”

When Nash was asked if he would like to offer a similar guarantee, he laughed.

“Yeah, I guarantee it, too,” Nash said with smile. “What does it mean? Everyone guarantees something at some stage and everyone forgets. I feel the whole guarantee thing is … I don’t know. If I went and guaranteed it would you guys care?”

D’Antoni said he wasn’t big on guarantees but didn’t mind Bryant making one, given the role he will play in making it a reality.

“He has a lot to say about it, so that’s good,” D’Antoni said. “I don’t mind as long as we back it up. I don’t mind at all. I think you have to have that mindset and I think everybody does. I’m not a guarantee kind of guy but I’ll let him do the talking since he’s got to do the walking. Kobe’s good enough. I’m with him all the way.”

Howard echoed Bryant’s sentiments in believing the Lakers will be able to turn around their season and make the playoffs.

“I’m not going to sit up here and say, ‘No, we’re not going to make it,’ ” Howard said. “We got to have faith and if we don’t, we’re not going to make it but I believe that we’re going to turn this around and we’re going to be great.”

The Lakers (26-29) have won six of their last nine games, including Wednesday’s 113-99 victory over the Boston Celtics. Despite the recent hot streak, Los Angeles trails the Houston Rockets by 3½ games for the eighth spot in the conference standings.

Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak thought Bryant’s confidence was “great,” but recognized it would be an uphill climb.

“We dug a hole for ourselves. And we’re going to need some help from teams that are in front of us. And we’re going to have to play really good basketball ourselves,” Kupchak said in an interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith. “But if we do get into the playoffs, that does mean that we’re playing good basketball. And at that point, I’m very comfortable in a seven-game series with anybody, even if we get in at number eight. I love Kobe’s confidence and his vision for this team for the next three or four months.

“And that’s what you need from one of your star players and one of your leaders, you’ve got to have someone that believes and I think that’s great.”

Bryant, the NBA’s fourth-leading scorer at 26.6 points per game, cited a loss earlier this month to the Miami Heat as one of the sources of his confidence.

The Lakers dropped a 107-97 decision in Miami on Feb. 10 to conclude a seven-game road trip.

Despite the loss, Bryant told Sports Illustrated the Lakers showed positive signs in the contest.

“We will make the playoffs,” he said. “And we will compete. And part of the reason I have that confidence is the Miami game. We had control of the game. That was no fluke. We were playing very, very well. We were reading the defense, making the extra pass.

“OK, they have two great players [LeBron James and Dwyane Wade] who scored eight straight buckets and took control of the game. But we were right there. We can do it.”

At Thursday’s memorial service for Lakers owner Jerry Buss, who died on Monday, Bryant also encouraged his teammates to look at the players and coaches in the room and make the most of this season in the memory of Buss.

“It would be great if we could use that as motivation,” Nash said. “I’d like to think that regardless of Dr. Buss passing that we’d have the toughness to find it in ourselves to rally. It’s been a tough year obviously, and trying, but we’ve made some progress and we have to continue to make progress the rest of the way. It would be a beautiful thing to do it for Dr. Buss.”

Howard, who had visited Buss in the hospital after being traded to the Lakers, said he and most of his teammates already had that in mind before Bryant’s speech.

“I think a lot of guys already felt that way anyway,” Howard said. “So it wasn’t nothing new. We’ve all been talking about doing something special and changing what’s been going on here.”

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Howard was scratched from Friday night’s game at Minnesota with a sore right shoulder and returned to Los Angeles to receive platelet-rich plasma treatments.

“It’s extremely sore all over,” Howard told reporters before the game. “[Saturday] after the procedure it was real stiff, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now.”

The All-Star center flew from L.A. to Detroit to rejoin the team Saturday evening but informed the Lakers he would not be able to play as the team boarded the bus Sunday morning on their way to the arena.

“As soon as the pain goes away he’ll play,” Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said. “Hopefully that’s the next game, but there are no guarantees. It’s just day to day. They’ll check it every day and see when he can go.”

The Lakers play the Brooklyn Nets on Tuesday — the team that Howard ranked as his preferred destination when the Orlando Magic were entertaining trade offers in the offseason — but Howard hinted that he could miss that game as well.

“We’ll see how it feels, but right now I’m just going to take it day by day,” Howard said. “We have a couple of days in New York to get some good rest and try to get it strong as possible. But the main thing is for the rest of the season. I don’t want to have this happen every week or two to where I’m fine and then I take a hard hit and I reaggravate it.”

Just as he did following the Lakers’ 92-86 loss to the Suns on Wednesday, Howard would not entertain any questions about surgery possibly being required on his shoulder.

“I don’t even want to think about surgery,” Howard said.

“He’s going to always have to deal with it because it’s not going to go away,” said D’Antoni. “It’s a little bit of a tear that won’t go away. If it gets totally bad then you have to do something [like surgery], but the way it is right now, you just have to deal with it.”

Howard said he hoped the PRP treatments would start to kick in within the next week, and he will rely on prayer in the meantime.

It’s the same injury that kept him out of three games in January; the Lakers went 0-3 in his absence.

Howard aggravated it against Phoenix, when Suns guard Shannon Brown swiped down on Howard’s arms as the big man attempted to bring the ball up from his waist to the basket, in similar fashion to how he originally hurt his shoulder on a hit on his arms from Los Angeles Clippers forward Caron Butler.

“He has to learn to get the ball under his chin and not take it down,” D’Antoni said. “He has a habit of taking it down [by his waist]. That’s when they’re loading up on him and they don’t care about him shooting foul shots, so they just unload on him. That’s a problem, but hopefully he can get that out of his game and not bring it down as much.”

Following the Phoenix game, Kobe Bryant said he suffered a similar shoulder injury in the past and that Howard would have to learn how to play through it. Howard took exception to the comparison.

“Me and Kobe play two different positions,” Howard said. “The position I play, I use a lot of force coming up — whether that’s going up for a dunk or a shot, hook shots … all that stuff you have to make sure your shoulder is stable for it, so it’s a little bit different than, I would say, a guard position. You got guys who are 260-270 [pounds] that you are holding off and you got to really be strong in your shoulder and all that stuff.”

Howard said he will continue to work on his conditioning while he rehabs the shoulder injury and joked that it will give him an opportunity to work on his left hand.

“There are certain treatments that I can do, certain things that I’ll try to work on to get it stronger,” Howard said. “We have the best training staff here in the NBA, so I’m going to continue to work with them on a daily basis to get stronger.”

Pau Gasol started his second consecutive game in Howard’s place as Howard watched the game from the bench in his warm-ups.

The Pistons, meanwhile, are still without guard Jose Calderon, whom they acquired from Toronto in a trade Wednesday. Calderon, from Spain, has been unavailable to play because of unresolved visa issues.

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