Kobe prefers to deflect, rather than reflect

Well, that's not entirely true. Kobe Bryant did engage in a little reflection during his time with the media on Friday, producing such insights as:

``I'll take a couple months off. These couple months I'm going to enjoy. It's going to be very relaxin.

``No evil flashbacks. Everything is going to be very positive.''

And, insight on his sleeping schedule over the summer:

``I'm doing OK. I don't sleep much anyway, so I'm just looking for different things to do at 6 in the morning. I'm not sure, maybe scuba diving.''

Basically, after several rather contentious exit interviews in the last few years, KB was pretty upbeat. And why not? The Lakers just won the title, celebrated with a parade, an afternoon at Disneyland and a rocking party at LA Live with a performance by Kanye West.

``It's a good memory. It all ends pretty abruptly,'' Bryant said of the last couple days. ``You kind of go through that phase where you wake up in the morning and it feels like you're supposed to be doing something. Feels like you're late for something. But that's the game goes. You're going and going and going full throttle and then all of a sudden, boom it's over. ''

In between vacation planning, sleep and late-night TV appearances, the focus shifts toward the offseason, namely whether Bryant will opt out, whether Phil Jackson will retire and whether the Lakers can keep their three free agents: Lamar Odom, Trevor Ariza and Shannon Brown.

While Bryant said signing Odom, Ariza and Brown was `` of the utmost importance'' he wasn't all that chatty about his own contract situation.

`` I've been deflecting that all year, I ain't going to stop now,'' he joked.

Our own Elliott Teaford followed up with, ``Why though?'' and Bryant said, ``Because y'all are going to make it a big ass story... I'm not going anywhere, I ain't going nowhere, we'd just waste our breath just talking about it. Let's talk about Trevor and Lamar, and the importance of bringing them back.''

On that subject, Bryant was pretty unequivocal:

``I think we've got a hell of a team. It took years and years of frustation to get to this point and having this group. Now we got the group, so now it's just about keeping this group together so we can keep on running this thing.''