Kobe Bryant acknowledged being "caught off guard" by comments made last week by Lakers owner Jerry Buss, but said he would "strap it up" and play if he were still on the Lakers' roster when the regular season rolled around Oct. 30.
Bryant granted a brief interview Tuesday afternoon to a small gathering of reporters awaiting him near his Bentley in the players' parking lot of the Lakers' training facility in El Segundo.
Bryant, when asked Tuesday if he had played his final game in a Lakers uniform, was non-committal.
"I don't know," he said. "Talk to Mitch [Kupchak] and Mr. Buss about that. I'm just getting ready. If I'm here, I'm ready to strap it up. My job is to play the game and get ready to play the game, and that's what I'm doing.
"It's my job to play basketball. It's not my job to worry about what management is doing. I'm just going to get ready and let them do their job."
The Lakers declined to comment publicly, but they are not looking to trade Bryant.
"There's nothing imminent," Jackson said.
He removed some personal items from his locker, but some remained.
"There's a book sitting there," Jackson said. "There's a net bag with some workout clothes that were sitting there this morning. There are things that were out of the locker, I will say that."
Jackson did not peer too far into the future.
"We can't project anything right now," he said. "I think there's a certain progression of things that we have to go through. We have to see how the feelings are in the situation, see if there can't be some remedies for it. From there, the next step takes place, and that is, how do we go forward as a basketball club?"