Howard has missed the past three games because of a torn labrum in his shoulder, aggravating an injury he initially suffered earlier this season.

Despite winning the three games Howard has missed, the Lakers (23-26) are 10th in the Western Conference playoff race. They also will be without star forward Pau Gasol, who has a tear in the plantar fascia of his right foot, an MRI revealed Wednesday. The Lakers fear Gasol could be sidelined four to six weeks, a source told ESPNLosAngeles.com.

“We don’t have time for (Howard’s shoulder) to heal,” Bryant said Wednesday in an exclusive interview with ESPNBoston.com’s Jackie MacMullan. “We need some urgency.”

The interview with MacMullan came one day after Bryant publicly challenged Howard, stating that playing through an injury is “something that you have to balance out and manage.”

Bryant also asserted that Howard is preoccupied with how he is perceived by fans and media.

“Dwight worries too much about what people think,” Bryant told MacMullan. “I told him, ‘You can’t worry about that. It’s holding you back.’ He says, ‘OK, OK, OK,’ but it’s always hovering around him.

“He just wants people to like him. He doesn’t want to let anyone down, and that gets him away from what he should be doing.”

Bryant also speculated that Howard, in his first season with Los Angeles, may not be accustomed to the Lakers’ standards.

“(Howard) has never been in a position where someone is driving him as hard as I am, as hard as this organization is,” Bryant told MacMullan. “It’s win a championship or everything is a complete failure. That’s just how (the Lakers) do it. And that’s foreign to him.

“When you think about it, there aren’t many organizations that look at it that way. There are only two that can really honestly say that’s what they live by — Los Angeles and Boston.”

Howard preached patience in a recent interview with ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, pointing to the fact that Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal needed three years before winning a championship with the Lakers.

But the 34-year-old Bryant, who is averaging 27.6 points per game in his 17th NBA season, is approaching this season with more desperation.

“We don’t have three years,” Kobe said. “We’ve got this year.”

Howard is listed as day to day, and his status is uncertain for Thursday’s game against the Boston Celtics.

The Lakers are hopeful Gasol’s injury will prompt Howard to return “sooner than later,” a team source told ESPNLosAngeles.com.

The post Kobe Bryant urges Dwight Howard appeared first on IdealCapper.

“I want to play,” Howard said after participating in shootaround in advance of the Los Angeles Lakers games against the Boston Celtics on Thursday. “I mean, why wouldn’t I want to play? But, at the same time, this is my career, this is my future, this is my life. I can’t leave that up to anybody else because nobody else is going to take care of me. So, if people are pissed off that I don’t play or if I do play, whatever it may be, so what? This is my career. If I go down, then what? Everybody’s life is going to go on. I don’t want to have another summer where I’m rehabbing and trying to get healthy again. I want to come back and have another great year. That’s what I want to do.”

Howard is considered a game-time decision after missing the last three games with a sore right shoulder from aggravating his torn labrum in the Lakers’ 92-86 loss to the Phoenix Suns at the start of their current seven-game road trip.

Kobe Bryant publicly challenged Howard to return, telling ESPNBoston.com’s Jackie MacMullan on Wednesday, “We don’t have time for (Howard’s shoulder) to heal … We need some urgency.”

Howard dismissed Bryant’s stance.

“That’s his opinion, that’s it,” Howard said. “He’s not a doctor, I’m not a doctor. That’s his opinion.”

Bryant said that his comments on Wednesday weren’t meant to turn up the pressure on Howard in light of the news that Pau Gasol has a torn plantar fascia in his right foot.

“There’s an urgency to be out there, but it’s not at the cost of making his shoulder worse,” Bryant said after shootaround. “I’ve always said if he was healthy enough to play and there was a situation where he wasn’t going to make it any worse then he should be playing. There should be an urgency about that, but I don’t think I said anything that was different (then he said before).”

Bryant wasn’t the only one of Howard’s teammates to clamor for the All-Star center’s return, however.

“I think everyone has got to play through some pain in this league and I’m not sure where Dwight exactly with his (injury), but hopefully he’s ready to come back soon,” Steve Nash said. “I think it’s inevitable he’s going to feel some discomfort and pain.”

Metta World Peace spoke up in support of Howard, citing how effective he has been while coming off offseason back surgery.

“He’s doing great and (he is) a great teammate,” World Peace said. “He’s out there, he had a couple 20-20 games and is averaging 18 and 11 or something like that playing hurt coming off that back surgery. I would say he’s a soldier and I’m not going to question his injury. He’s hurt to me. We have to go out there and we have to hold it down for him.”

Howard said that Gasol’s injury has not sped up his timeline to return and added that the way he feels he mishandled his back injury last season in Orlando is shaping how he deals with his shoulder this year.

“I don’t want that situation to happen again,” Howard said. “Last year I wanted to prove and show people that I can play through injuries, but the back is something serious and I don’t want that to happen again.”

Howard was asked if he could see his shoulder injury becoming worse if he gets back on the court.

“Yes, (with) the way I play,” Howard said. “The post is not an easy position. You’re pushing guys (who weigh) 260-270 (pounds) and you have to use a lot of force to do that. If play tonight, we’ll see how I feel later on. If I don’t, we’ll just have to move forward.”

Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said that the Lakers will likely go with a small starting lineup of Earl Clark at center and World Peace and Antawn Jamison at the forward spots if Howard cannot play against the Celtics.

“If we just go out there and play team basketball, move bodies, help, hedge on screens, box out, sacrifice and at the end of the game it’s just going to be a team game and there’s five guys on the floor, so, I don’t think we have positions,” said World Peace, who could be asked to play some backup center along with rookie Robert Sacre. “Kobe could be switched off on the center. It’s just five guys playing basketball at this point.”

D’Antoni said the decision to whether to play or not ultimately rests with Howard.

“I think he’s cleared (by the medical staff), but he’s cleared (fully) when the pain goes away, so he tells us when the pain goes away,” D’Antoni said.

D’Antoni said he has not had any discussions with team management about adding another big man in the interim with Gasol flying back to L.A. on Thursday morning to meet with Lakers team doctors as well as a specialist, but he plans to meet with general manager Mitch Kupchak in Miami on Saturday to talk things over.

The post Dwight Howard fires back at critics appeared first on IdealCapper.

Howard was evaluated in Minneapolis by Lakers trainer Gary Vitti on Thursday and had been listed as day to day.

Howard suffered the injury midway through the fourth quarter of Wednesday’s 92-86 loss. The seven-time All-Star fell to the floor in pain after being blocked by Suns guard Shannon Brown with 6:57 remaining in the contest.

Howard checked out of the game and did not return as the Lakers squandered a 13-point lead. After icing his shoulder and applying kinesiology tape to the joint, Howard told reporters he was “real sore” and “hurting pretty bad.”

Although he acknowledged Wednesday that he may have to rest his shoulder, Howard had said he wanted to try to play against the Wolves.

“I’m going to try as much as I can, but I don’t want to cause more damage to my shoulder,” Howard said. “I don’t want to (miss any games), but we’ll see.”

When asked whether he would have to consider surgery to repair his shoulder, Howard replied, “Not right now.”

The 6-foot-11 Howard originally injured his shoulder on Jan. 4 against the Los Angeles Clippers and was forced to miss three games. He aggravated the injury last week against the Memphis Grizzlies and sat out the remainder of that contest, but did not miss any subsequent games.

Kobe Bryant said Wednesday that he has played through shoulder injuries in the past, and it will be an adjustment that Howard has to make.

“I’m not worried about it,” Bryant said. “It is going to be an all-season thing. That’s how those types of injuries are with the labrum. I’ve had them before. … It’s one of those things when you get banged like that going up, you’re going to get that stinging sensation. That’s just how it’s going to be.”

The post Dwight Howard sitting out Friday appeared first on IdealCapper.

Howard was blocked by the Suns’ Shannon Brown with 6:57 remaining in the fourth as he tried to bring the ball from his waist up to the hoop following an offensive rebound and went down to the floor in pain.

Howard checked out of the game and did not return as the Suns finished on a 19-8 run without him. Howard’s shoulder will be re-evaluated Thursday after the team flies to Minneapolis and his availability for Friday’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves will be determined.

“It’s real sore,” Howard told reporters after icing his shoulder and applying kinesiology tape to the joint following the game. “Everything on (the right) side (of my body) is hurting pretty bad right now.”

Howard originally injured his shoulder during a Jan. 4 game against the Los Angeles Clippers and sat out three games to try to strengthen the muscles surrounding his shoulder. He re-injured it in the second quarter of the Lakers’ 106-93 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies last week and sat out the second half, but did not miss any subsequent games.

The All-Star center said Wednesday’s aggravation was the worst pain he’s had since the original injury occurred against the Clippers, and he will have to consider resting again to help it heal.

“I’m going to try as much as I can but I don’t want to cause more damage to my shoulder,” said Howard, who finished with nine points and 14 rebounds in 29 minutes against Phoenix. “I don’t want to (miss any games), but we’ll see.”

When Howard was asked whether he would have to consider surgery to repair his shoulder, the big man replied, “Not right now.”

Kobe Bryant said he has played through shoulder injuries in the past and it will be an adjustment that Howard has to make.

“I’m not worried about it,” Bryant said. “It is going to be an all-season thing. That’s how those types of injuries are with the labrum. I’ve had them before. Lamar (Odom) when he was here had them before. It’s one of those things when you get banged like that going up, you’re going to get that stinging sensation. That’s just how it’s going to be.”

What Bryant was worried about was how the Lakers performed defensively in the fourth quarter without Howard, allowing the Suns to score 29 points on 11-for-16 shooting (68.8 percent), while outscoring the Lakers 10-4 in points in the paint.

“We played well defensively outside of a stretch at the end of the ballgame when we let (Michael) Beasley get to his strong hand and get all the way to the rim with no support,” Bryant said. “That’s not acceptable. We had been playing solid defense all night long.”

Beasley scored 10 of his 27 points in the fourth quarter.

“They started getting to the rack a little too easy,” Howard said. “There was really no defensive presence in the paint, so Beasley got opportunities to just go down the lane and finish. So it was tough to watch.”

Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni hoped that Howard would not be watching from the sidelines for too much longer as he deals with the injury.

“I think it’s the same as always in terms of it hurts a lot, and hopefully by (Thursday) the pain goes away and he can play the next game,” D’Antoni said. “It’s my understanding that it’s something that will hurt, go away, and then he plays when it goes away.”

Howard, who missed the final portion of last season in Orlando because of debilitating back pain, said that his shoulder injury is “nothing” compared to his back injury that required offseason surgery.

“Two years of having injuries is not something that’s easy to deal with, but I won’t lose my spirit and I just got to continue to do whatever I can to get my shoulder strong,” Howard said.

With the loss, the Lakers fell to 20-26 and are four games behind Houston for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.

The post Dwight Howard: Shoulder ‘real sore’ appeared first on IdealCapper.

Howard was examined by Lakers’ doctor Steve Lombardo before the game and cleared to return.

Howard was injured in the second half of the Lakers’ 107-102 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers last week when he got his arms tangled up with Caron Butler. He played through the injury in the Lakers’ following game, a 112-105 loss to the Denver Nuggets, and tied a career high with 26 rebounds and added 14 points and four blocks in 41 minutes of playing time despite the pain.

The Lakers went 0-3 in Howard’s absence.

Lakers forward Pau Gasol, who has also been sidelined the last three games after suffering a concussion against Denver, was not cleared to return to game action after being examined Sunday morning. He will be re-evaluated Monday.

The post Dwight Howard back in lineup appeared first on IdealCapper.

“I don’t know what the best way is to make them play together, but I know one thing is that they both got to just play hard and believe and not worry about — ‘Hey, how can we make this work,’ ” Nash said. “We just got to fight and scrap and on defense, use their length and athleticism and on offense, we all got to just be unselfish and sacrifice and make plays for each other regardless of where we are on the floor.”

Gasol has missed the past three games after sustaining a concussion against the Denver Nuggets when JaVale McGee inadvertently elbowed his nose.

Gasol was re-evaluated on Saturday and not cleared to resume basketball activities. He will receive another examination Sunday morning in advance of the game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lakers coach Mike D’Antoni said Gasol will be a game-time decision.

Howard also has missed the past three games with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. He participated in on-court conditioning exercises Saturday and will be re-evaluated Sunday. The Lakers are officially listing Howard as out, but D’Antoni said he will be a game-time decision.

While Gasol has been out, the Lakers (15-21) have floundered, losing three straight games to extend their losing streak to six — the worst skid for the franchise since it lost seven in a row in March 2007.

Nash also said it will be part of his responsibility as a point guard to get Gasol going when the big men do get back in the lineup. Gasol is averaging career lows in both points per game (12.1) and shooting percentage (41.6 percent) this season.

“I’m going to try to get Pau involved,” Nash said. “Obviously, I think he’s a terrific player. I think when we played together recently, there was a lot of opportunities where (the defense) would jump out on my pick-and-rolls, I’d get it back to him quickly. He can be the playmaker in 4-on-3, 3-on-2 situations where he really thrives. The fact of the matter, it’s tough to get inside to him when Dwight and him are on the floor together. To Pau’s credit, he can stretch the floor more than Dwight and he’s more of a playmaker, so sometimes he’s going to find himself on the perimeter.”

In Nash’s opinion, it’s Gasol’s mental game, not his positioning on the court, that matters most.

“I think Pau is a tremendous basketball player,” Nash said. “I need to see him get his health and his confidence back. Even when he has been inside this year he hasn’t looked very confident. For me, I really want to see him really feel better physically, mentally, confident and enjoy the game because I don’t know if he’s been himself this year. If we can get him back to himself, it doesn’t matter where he plays. He’ll be great.”

Lakers executive vice president of player personnel Jim Buss told ESPNLA 710 radio in Los Angeles on Thursday that when Gasol returns, he wants the former four-time All-Star to receive more touches on the block.

“I love Pau Gasol,” Buss said. “The thing is, if you shoot the basketball from six feet, your percentages are going to be in the high 50s. If you shoot from 18 feet, you’re lucky to get 40 percent. To base his year off of his shooting percentages is just not the right way to analyze how he’s playing.

“I believe if we can get him down low, he can coexist with Dwight Howard if they play enough games to where they can play off each other. I believe eventually he will move down there and D’Antoni will move him down there and his percentage will go back right to where it was.”

D’Antoni said he has spoken to Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak about fixing things for Gasol before the Lakers lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder 116-101 on Friday.

“We talked about it and I think it’s pretty evident we’d like to get him more touches down there,” D’Antoni said. “… There are going to be a lot of changes (when Gasol and Howard return). We have to try to do everything and if that works, yeah, we’ll do it in a heartbeat.”

The post Steve Nash wants big men to coexist appeared first on IdealCapper.

“We still like this team a lot,” Buss said Thursday in an interview with ESPNLA 710 radio in Los Angeles. “How can you not believe in this team? This team is built to win. It’s a very, very solid team. We haven’t seen them all together and play together for games. In my mind, we would not consider a temporary fix or blow it up. Why blow up something we have a future with?

“It’s very difficult to talk this way because we’re five games under or six games under .500, and we’ve dug ourselves a hole. But at the same time, I feel that if we put it together, we can string seven or eight games in a row and dig ourselves out of this hole. If we play with the energy we’ve seen in the last two games, then I think you go into the playoffs with momentum.”

Buss was referring, of course, to the Lakers’ injury woes this season. Steve Nash missed seven weeks with a broken bone in his leg. Dwight Howard has struggled in his recovery from back surgery and is now out indefinitely with a torn labrum in his right shoulder. Pau Gasol has missed time with assorted leg injuries and is now out with a concussion. Backup point guard Steve Blake has missed all but the first five games with an abdominal injury.

Still, bad luck hasn’t been the whole story of the Lakers’ season. The team fired coach Mike Brown five games into the season and chose Mike D’Antoni to replace him when former coach and 11-time NBA champion Phil Jackson was available and interested in the job.

General manager Mitch Kupchak has previously said the Lakers chose D’Antoni because they felt his system would apply to this roster better than Jackson’s Triangle offense. Buss concurred and said he, Kupchak and his father, owner Dr. Jerry Buss, still feel that way.

“We thought Steve Nash was our future point guard for the next three years and we needed a coach we felt would fit with him,” Buss said. “That was one of the main issues where we thought that D’Antoni was better than Phil. Well, not better, nobody’s better than Phil, but we felt that he fit the team the way we wanted to work it.

“I like D’Antoni a lot. I still believe in him 100 percent. I have no questions about him. We just have to have this team work together and play together. We just don’t have enough information to analyze anything. It’s just not enough data to put your finger on a problem.”

Injuries and everything else aside, what if this team and its $99.2 million payroll don’t make the playoffs?

“We stuck our neck out with this payroll because Kobe (Bryant) is in the twilight of his career and we want to win championships,” Buss said. “Now, am I upset that we might not make the playoffs? Of course. I’d be upset if I had a $10 payroll or a $200 million payroll. I want to make the playoffs and I want to win championships. But to panic? No, we’re not going to panic.”

The Lakers could face a difficult situation in convincing Howard to re-sign with them when he becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1. The Lakers can offer more years and more money than any other team because of the way the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement is structured, but would Howard want to stick around after a season that’s gone so poorly?

“If we make the playoffs, that means we’re playing well and I think we’ll go deep in the playoffs and it’s a no-brainer that he stays,” Buss said. “I think if it continues to fall apart because of injuries, I’m hoping we can convince him, ‘Look, everybody was injured, you weren’t 100 percent for the whole year, let’s give it another shot next year.’

“It points to 95 percent that we’ll be able to keep him. I can’t control what he does, but I can sure make a great argument.”

As for Gasol, who is averaging a career-low 12.6 points a game and has struggled each of the past two seasons to find his place in the Lakers’ offense, Buss said he expects the 7-foot Spaniard not only to revert to his previous form, but to play more in the low post, as both Gasol and Bryant have advocated.

“I love Pau Gasol,” Buss said. “The thing is, if you shoot the basketball from 6 feet, your percentages are going to be in the high 50s. If you shoot from 18 feet, you’re lucky to get 40 percent. To base his year off of his shooting percentages is just not the right way to analyze how he’s playing.

“I believe if we can get him down low, he can coexist with Dwight Howard if they play enough games to where they can play off each other. I believe eventually he will move down there and D’Antoni will move him down there and his percentage will go back right to where it was.”

The post Lakers are ‘very solid’ appeared first on IdealCapper.