The refrain from faithful Los Angeles Lakers fans has been the same from the moment Kobe Bryant went down last year with a torn Achilles: "Just you wait—No. 24 will be back and better than ever next year."
A quick scan through the facts shows that Bryant has quite a hill to climb—in the sense that Mt. Everest is a hill.
If he somehow manages to return to an All-Star level, Bryant would be the first guard of his age to do so following a major surgery. According to Basketball-Reference, only seven backcourt players aged 35 or older (Bryant will turn 35 before the 2013-14 season) have ever made the All-Star team.
And none of them did so after sustaining an injury as career-threatening as Bryant's.
Compounding the unlikelihood of a potential Bryant resurgence is the horrible track record of players who've sustained his particular injury. Only Dominique Wilkins, who tore his Achilles at age 32, managed to come back looking like the player he was before his injury.
But as Kyle Wagner of Deadspin points out:
At the time of his injury, Dominique had played 27,482 ...
Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by Grant Hughes
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