Report: Kobe Bryant Returns to Practice

Updates have been few and far between when it comes to Kobe’s progress in his achilles rehab. Outside of general soundbites about him being “ahead of schedule” countered with him saying he will not rush to return mixed with the occasional “if it were the playoffs, I’d play today” comments, we really don’t know how far along Kobe is or when he is slated to return to game action.

Today, however, Kobe took another, highly visible, step in that return when he practiced with the team:

After seven months rehabbing a torn Achilles, Kobe Bryant has returned to Lakers practice, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@WojYahooNBA) November 16, 2013

Before we get too excited, we have no clue to what extent Kobe participated in practice or how long he will need to practice before he is ready to play in a game. Nearly three weeks ago, Kobe said that he would need roughly three weeks to get his conditioning in order to start to practice.

Per Adrian Wojnarowski, Kobe would hope to be able to play within two weeks of returning to practice, but there are still many details to work out and hurdles to clear in order to actually make that happen.

This is a big step forward, however. It is also the exact type of update fans have been thirsting for and after losing to the Grizzlies last night and falling to 4-7 on the year, it’s a nice pick-me-up to have #24 back on the practice court. We hope to have more updates on a projected timeline, what Kobe did in practice, how he looked doing it, and more soon. But for now, rejoice in this good news. We may not know how close he is to returning to the lineup, but we do know he is closer.