Kobe Bryant Offers Kevin Durant Advice on Achilles’ Injury

Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant knows a thing or two about rehabbing back from a gruesome Achilles injury. So with superstar Kevin Durant on the shelf with a ruptured Achilles of his own and facing a long road to recovery, Bryant decided to step in and offer some wisdom from his own bout with the debilitating injury.

Kobe Bryant Offers Kevin Durant Advice on Achilles’ Injury

Speaking from experience, Bryant gave Durant some pointers on how to navigate the mental side of the excruciatingly long recovery process.

“Well, I think it’s a lot of patience. I mean, it’s different, you know, Achilles you’re not dealing with a muscle where you can, you know, work it back into shape,” Bryant told ESPN. “You have to let the tendon heal and you can’t rush it at all. So it’s a lot of being patient and then paying attention to what the doctors are saying. You have to do the physical therapy every single day and it’s boring. I mean, it’s really boring.”

Stressing that the Achilles isn’t something that can be easily worked back into shape and that staying on top of the boring, meticulous physical therapy is the most crucial part to a full recovery. Especially with athletes, who deal with the added pressure of trying to rush back onto the court as soon as possible, Bryant made sure to tell Durant that patience is key and listening to both his body and his doctors is paramount to his recovery.

Durant’s Achilles injury was sustained in part due to a strained calf muscle that he rushed back from to play in the NBA Finals. While Durant felt fine and had been cleared by multiple medical professionals for basketball activities, going from extended rest to a full-throttle NBA Finals game proved too much for his body to handle. Now rehabbing back from a much more serious Achilles injury, the most important thing for Durant to do is to be patient and take a slow and steady route to returning to the NBA court.

Lakers Legend Kobe Bryant Shows off the “Mamba Mentality” in Instagram Post

Kobe has since altered the original caption slightly, adding in “meaning she enjoyed dance more than ball which is fine. Now? She eats sleeps and breaths the game.” and would go on to post a video of himself at a dance recital that he claims he missed two weeks of basketball for.

The backlash Bryant got from his Instagram post was widespread with a number of people challenging Bryant’s stance on youth sports and just how seriously he took coaching his daughter’s middle school basketball team.

That said, fans shouldn’t expect any less from the Mamba as his ruthless “win at all costs” mentality is what initially endeared him to the fans in the first place. While he may not consider fourth place “winning”, it seems that Kobe is quite the basketball coach, helping turn his daughter’s team around and leading them to one of the more lopsided victories you’ll ever see on a basketball court.