Kobe Bryant already has a no-trade clause in his contract, but Jim Buss said on Friday that he would never trade him anyways.

"I think about a lot of things to improve this team, to figure out how to manage the finances of it," said Jim Buss on Friday. "One thing I haven't thought of is Kobe being somewhere else. I don't know why that question has ever come up and I'd like to squish that one."

Jim Buss has become more involved in personnel decisions over the past few seasons.

"I might disagree with you that Kobe only has three or four years left, but we'll see," Buss said. "As you see, we make trades and our whole focus isn't to win a sixth (championship). I'm not sure I would stop there for Kobe; I would go to seven or eight if we can. ... I think Kobe is going to be a Laker for life and I'm pretty sure he's not going to hang them up after two years."

Buss also addressed how the NBA's new CBA impacts teams like the Lakers.

"The lockout had to do with what is fair is fair," Buss said. "The percentages weren't correct and teams were losing money. I think what happened with the lockout and the new CBA and the revenue sharing all at one time, it looks like it was pointed towards the Lakers, but nobody actually pointed their finger at the Lakers. We're a very successful organization. We make a good amount of money and the other teams lose money and we're an easy target to try to get that money.

"We fought tooth and nail to keep the flexibility to keep this going. Obviously, we lost to a certain degree because we have lost our flexibility to spend money. The revenue sharing was, in our mind, excessive but to other people it wasn't."