Injuries, as any injured person could tell you, are just such incredibly personal things. It's silly for someone sitting next to you to declare you are ready to get roughed up on the court. Injured players talk things over with doctors, trainers and medical staffers, and they make the decision about whether to play or not.

And that's that, and that's sacred, and that's how it should be.

But that's not how it is on the Lakers right now.

Kobe Bryant is leading a number of Lakers who are noodling, publicly, with the idea that their franchise center, Dwight Howard, might be more ready to play than he thinks he is. Here's what Bryant said to ESPN Boston's Jackie MacMullan:

"We don't have time for [Howard's shoulder] to heal," Kobe said in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. "We need some urgency.

"[Dwight] has never been in a position where someone is driving him as hard as I am, as hard as this organization is.

"It's win a championship or everything is a complete failure. That's just how we [the Lakers] do it. And that's foreign to him."
Steve Nash told ESPN Los Angeles' Dave McMenamin: "Hopefully he's ready to come back soon. I think it's inevitable he's going to feel some discomfort and pain."

Mike D'Antoni pointed out Howard has been cleared by doctors.

Rule of not questioning somebody else's injury: broken.

In defense mode: Howard.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/54432/tough-guy-to-believe

The crackback from Dwight:

On Kobe telling him to play:

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

What really boiled Howard’s blood was calling his competitiveness into question.

“”I want to play, 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.”

Kobe did backtrack a little at shootaround, saying he doesn’t know how Howard’s body feels.

http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/07/dwight-howard-fires-back-at-kobe-says-he-has-to-watch-out-for-himself/