Utah Jazz: Kobe's back is yesterday's worry

Jazz players are sick of talking, and hearing, about it. Kobe Bryant still may be pained by it.

It's Bryant bad back, and it played an integral role as the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Jazz in Wednesday night's Game 5 and took a 3-2 advantage in their best-of-seven NBA Western Conference semifinal playoff series.

What part that aching back plays in tonight's Game 6 at EnergySolutions Arena, where the Jazz's postseason life is on the line, remains to be seen.

It could still be hurting, prompting Bryant to do what he did Wednesday: trust his teammates and leave it to the likes of Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom to do in the Jazz down the stretch.

"I don't think Kobe was the one that killed," Jazz forward Matt Harpring said. "I think it was the rest of their team."

It could still be hurting, and those very same teammates may ask Bryant to step up anyway, as happened in overtime of the Jazz's Game 4 victory last Sunday.

It could be just fine, allowing Bryant to post his fifth 30-plus-point game of the series and to take more than the 10 shots from the field that he hoisted in Game 5.

Or maybe it's somewhere in-between.

Bryant, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site, sat out practice Thursday, as did fellow veterans Gasol, Odom and Derek Fisher.

But Lakers coach Phil Jackson told the Times that Bryant — though the back had tightened up in Wednesday's fourth quarter — "seems to be OK" and was "all right."

In any event, it will be the most-discussed back on TV tonight.

It will have great impact, one way or another, and whether or not Utah gets back to even in the series.

And, likelier than not, it will in no way, shape or form be as painful as the NBA's recently crowned MVP indicated it was after he twisted it on a turnaround jumper early in Game 4 at EnergySolutions.

"There cannot be another level after what I went through over there," Bryant said after being asked about exploring "the next region of pain."

"That was the worst, most, pain I've ever felt in a game," he added. "I can't imagine there being another region besides that one."

After two full days of rest and rehab Monday and Tuesday, the back definitely had improved.