Kobe Bryant thinks that Phil Jackson and Carmelo Anthony can work things out while there’s an update on New York Knicks center Joakim Noah.
If there’s anyone who’d understand having a bad relationship with Phil Jackson it’s Kobe Bryant. The recently retired star can sympathize with Carmelo Anthony, but he also sees the light at the end of the tunnel for the New York Knicks.Bryant told Marc Berman of The New York Post that while he doesn’t have a solution for the Melo-Phil, he doesn’t believe it’s beyond reconciliation.
“Not from what I’ve been through with Phil,’’ Bryant told The Post on Wednesday in an interview to promote the short being shown at the festival through Saturday. “Michael had his rough times with him as well. The history is you get through rough times after you win a good amount of championships. We certainly had our rocky times, but we still stuck to it, we figured out our way through it and came out better because of it. I think the most important thing is sticking to it, being patient. Sometimes things work out. Sometimes they don’t.”
Bryant has turned to filmmaking since his retirement.
On Sunday, he was in town for the premiere of his animated film “Dear Basketball” at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jackson attended the premiere of the film, which was based on Bryant’s famous retirement poem.
Per Berman, Kobe stated that he’d lost touch with Melo recently. He called upon his history with Phil and how the winning smoothed everything over.
“From my experience, from what I had with Phil — again it’s a different situation, he was coaching the team — but you can get through rocky times,’’ Bryant said. “They certainly were there in Chicago and when he was in L.A. But the championships can overshadow that.’’
We have an update on Joakim Noah.
According to Ian Begley of ESPN New York, Noah had surgery on Wednesday to repair a torn rotator cuff.
According to head coach Jeff Hornacek, the recovery time will be five months.
Kristaps Porzingis spoke about Noah’s contributions to the team via his Monday press conference.
“There was, especially at the start of the season,’’ Porzingis said. “Noah is a player who always used to play in the system, he knows the right way [to play], so he doesn’t want to step away from it and maybe we needed a guy just like him. Right now, he maybe doesn’t play as well as he wants, so it was in some ways hard to be that leader.
