Kobe Bryant: knee is ’95 percent better’

A sneak-peak at tomorrow’s notebook …

The only thing Kobe Bryant hates more than losing is talking about his many injuries, so after a mob of reporters descended upon him before the Lakers’ faced the New York Knicks tonight at Staples Center, he asked for a little help from a team official.

“This is a long five minutes, isn’t it?” he asked media relations czar John Black.

Bryant spoke for the first time about his offseason trip to Germany to have a relatively new procedure called Orthokine performed on his ailing right knee. It is similar to platelet-rich plasma therapy, an increasing popular blood procedure among athletes.

In Bryant’s case, it helped ease the pain in his arthritic knee, restoring his explosiveness. Last season, he described his knee as “pretty much bone-on-bone,” because of the loss of cartilage and the onset of arthritis.

“I’m 95 percent better,” he said. “It has to make sense. You can’t just try it to try it. It has to be something you come back with research and study. It’s my job to know these things. You have people you pay to know these things.

“You sit them down and talk to them. You listen to their opinion.”