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LOS ANGELES -- If the Los Angeles Lakers end up making the deep postseason run the team hopes it can, then there might be some help on the way for their depleted bench.

Backup big man Jordan Hill was examined by Dr. Thomas Byrd in Nashville, Tenn., this week and cleared to begin running on an altered-gravity treadmill starting Friday.

The clearance comes just three months after Hill underwent what was considered at the time to be season-ending surgery on his left hip.

Hill will begin running with 70 percent of his body weight, according to the team. He will gradually increase the weight on the treadmill, barring any setbacks, and be cleared for full weight-bearing running and jumping exercises once he reaches 100 percent.

The team estimates it will take another 3-4 weeks of on-court basketball drills before Hill will be able to resume playing in games.

The four-year veteran averaged 6.7 points and 5.7 rebounds in 15.8 minutes per game this season.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Kobe Bryant emerged from the showers late Wednesday night and limped through the nearly empty visitors locker room at the Rose Garden, stopping briefly on his way to the training room to change so he could acknowledge Metta World Peace.

"You always backed me," Bryant said with intense appreciation.

Bryant was winding down from what can only be described as an epic performance by the 17-year veteran -- a season-high 47 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 4 blocks and 3 steals with only 1 turnover, a statistical line never before recorded in the league, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

And all those stats paled in comparison to Bryant's playing all 48 minutes, each and every second of the game, to help L.A. sweep a back-to-back for the first time in 16 tries this season and beat the Trail Blazers 113-106 in Portland, where the Lakers had lost 12 of their previous 14 games.

But World Peace and the rest of Bryant's teammates might not quite have his back the way he thinks they do.

After 79 games and with the Lakers on the edge of a playoff berth, holding a one-game lead over Utah for the No. 8 spot in the West with only three left to play, Bryant's teammates don't seem to be content to just feed the "All hail Kobe, the living legend" propaganda machine and ride his coattails into the playoffs.

If the season is worth saving at this point after all the trials and tribulations every player and coach in the locker room has gone through, it has to be saved as a team, the right way. If it's going to come down to Bryant playing hero ball from now until when the Lakers' season ends, there's a sense that Bryant's teammates would rather have an early summer if it means acting as the stage crew for Bryant's one-man show.

"It's bittersweet," Pau Gasol said when asked about Bryant's dominating performance against the Blazers, in which he played all 48 minutes in a non-overtime road game for the first time in his career. "Because, I think it's spectacular and it's very impressive and it's remarkable to be able to play 48 minutes and score 47 points. That's incredible. On the other hand, I'm a player that likes to see a little bit more ball movement and better balance. I've always been [like that]. That's just how I perceive this game.

"But again, he was incredible tonight. He scored a tremendous amount of points that I never scored in my life. So, like I said, it was very impressive and it's not something that you do every night, of course."

Gasol was quick to add context to his quotations, making it clear from his tone that this wasn't an issue of jealousy for the attention Bryant would receive for the feat, or a lack of appreciation for the talent Bryant has. And Gasol is certainly aware he might not be a Laker today and definitely would not be a Laker finally getting consistent post touches in Mike D'Antoni's system if it wasn't for Bryant supporting him.

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PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Rose Garden has been a place, for quite some time, where the Los Angeles Lakers' hopes and dreams have come to die.

Coming into Wednesday, the Lakers' previous three games in Portland were losses. As were 12 of their previous 14 and, going back all the way to 2002, 17 of their past 21.

But Kobe Bryant has shown that he has the power to rise above the Trail Blazers' house of horrors before, and boy did he ever do it again in a 113-106 victory.

Bryant has been going by the self-appointed "vino" nickname this season to describe how his game has been aging like a fine wine.

Forget vino, Wednesday was straight vintage.

Bryant did everything but sell popcorn, as they say, finishing with 47 points, eight rebounds, five assists, four blocks and three steals in an epic performance.

If the Lakers are going to live up to Bryant's playoff guarantee, he just might have to be the guy to will them there.

How it happened: L.A. gave up one of its all-too-typical poison-pill quarters to start things off, as Portland posted 41 points in the opening frame, but thanks to Bryant keeping up the torrid pace that he started against New Orleans, things never got too out of hand. The Lakers settled down on defense and used a 17-2 spurt to start the third quarter to really take back control of the game. They outscored the Blazers by nine in the fourth thanks to Bryant and Pau Gasol two-manning them to death, and the team defense holding Portland to just 16 points.

What it means: L.A. has a one-game lead over the Utah Jazz for the eighth and final spot in the Western Conference playoffs with three games left to play. That's what matters.

Hits: As brilliant as Bryant was, Gasol had himself a night. Gasol finished with 23 points, nine assists, seven rebounds and two blocks.

Dwight Howard had 20 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks.

Misses: The Lakers' defense allowed surefire rookie of the year winner Damian Lillard to score a career-high 38 points.

L.A. had 15 turnovers leading to 16 Portland points.

Steve Nash missed his fifth straight game because of lingering right hip and hamstring issues. He is questionable for Friday.

Stat of the game: Bryant put up his eighth 40-point game of the season.

Up next: The Lakers have three games left in the regular season, all of them at home: Friday against Golden State, Sunday against San Antonio and Wednesday against Houston.

LOS ANGELES -- Will Metta World Peace's speedy return from knee surgery set the table for a couple of other Los Angeles Lakers players to follow suit as they recover from their own injuries?

Maybe.

Steve Nash will travel with the Lakers for their game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. A source close to Nash told ESPNLosAngeles.com that the point guard is eyeing a Friday return when the Lakers host the Golden State Warriors and characterized the chances of him playing against the Blazers as "slim."

Nash has recently switched to a new, stronger medication in hopes of alleviating the pain associated with the right hip injury that has been causing him hamstring problems and kept him out of all but two minutes of the Lakers' last five games.

As amazing as World Peace's recovery was, Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni said several weeks ago it would take a "miracle" for Jordan Hill to return this season.

Hill, who has been out since January following left hip surgery, will have his hip examined in Nashville on Wednesday by Dr. Thomas Byrd, who performed the operation.

"Just a check up to see where we are at," Hill's agent, Kevin Bradbury, told ESPNLosAngeles.com.

Hill resumed elliptical workouts last month and said he hoped to be eligible to return by late April or early May if he were cleared.

(UPDATE: 4:15 p.m.)

After his checkup Wednesday, Hill sent out two tweets:

"Check up went good...i will start back running in a week and jumping in a week and see how things go"

That was followed by another one.

"Not tryna rush it but the kid is feeling damn good!!!"

LOS ANGELES -- In pretty much the definition of a late-developing wrinkle, with it being Game No. 78 of 82 on the Los Angeles Lakers' schedule and all, the team decided to give the oft-injured, trade-speculated, over-the-hill (at least by reputation) Pau Gasol a chance to be the four-time All-Star, two-time champion, pride-of-Spain that he is.

Well, one player on the team decided it, to be specific.

"He just tells me to just run to the post and take it and screw everything else, basically," Gasol said of Kobe Bryant's instructions. "That's not my personality. I like my team and my coaching staff to want me to be there, instead of positioning myself there, but hey. ... It helps that Kobe, who has a lot of control over what happens out there, wants me to be there and sees that it works and is supportive."

The direction paid off with 22 points, 11 rebounds, four assists and three blocks from Gasol in the Lakers' 104-96 win over the New Orleans Hornets on Tuesday, but the numbers aren't nearly as important as the revelation of what an empowered Gasol can mean for the Lakers.

Gasol was on ESPNLA 710 radio in Los Angeles after shootaround Tuesday, and host Mychal Thompson implored Gasol to be selfish and take 15 to 20 shots in the post per game. Gasol replied with the obvious: "That would be a big change from one or two."

The thing is, a Gasol reclamation project over the last four games plus any potential postseason run for L.A. would not only perhaps save Gasol from becoming trade bait in the offseason, but it would help Bryant do away with the lingering stigma that he's an impossible teammate to coexist with, and earn coach Mike D'Antoni some credit for being malleable and finally coming around.

Bryant, who can sniff out a storyline from a mile away and is as masterful as manipulating a narrative as they come, smartly gave shine to D'Antoni for the Gasol resurgence, even if it originally came at his own urging.

"I think Mike just realized what he has in Pau," Bryant said after the game. "During that stretch there, second quarter when I was out of the game, during a timeout he said, 'Guys, we just got to pound the ball inside to Pau. We just got to go to him. Stop trying to do things on the pick-and-roll, just go inside, let him muscle us.'"

For a guy who called the straight post-up play the least efficient play in basketball at his introductory news conference, that statement alone shows how much he has been willing to change his philosophies to match his personnel instead of being stubborn and insisting it be the other way around.

Gasol, for his part, tried it the other way by launching 3-pointers in the early going, limited to being a straight facilitator at other times and even swallowing the demotion to backup center off the bench for a brief while, but now he's smart enough to see this is his last chance to prove that not only is he important in the present, but he can be in the future.

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LOS ANGELES -- With all the 5-0 talk surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers' finish to the season, it was questionable whether L.A. would even have enough fight left to get the first game toward that goal.

The severely sub-.500 New Orleans would seem like an easy opponent to start things off against, but then again, the Hornets led by 25 against L.A. back in March before Kobe Bryant scored 18 points in the fourth quarter to key a ridiculous rally.

He one-upped himself Tuesday, scoring 23 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter to put the pesky Hornets away.

How it happened: L.A. led by as many as 10 points in the second quarter before New Orleans used a 14-0 run to erase that to take a 50-45 lead into the locker room. Things were tied at 70-all to start the fourth quarter before Bryant went on a personal 7-0 run, connecting on three straight jumpers, to give L.A. a small cushion, and he extended that spurt to score the Lakers' first 14 points of the final period as the Hornets kept it close.

What it means: The Utah Jazz did their part, falling to the Oklahoma City Thunder 90-80 on Tuesday. L.A. is back to holding a half-game lead over the Jazz for the eighth and final playoff spot as the games continue to be checked off the schedule. The Lakers are back to being in the driver's seat when it comes to meeting their postseason goal; now they just have to stay on the road.

Hits: Metta World Peace returned to the lineup after missing just 12 days following knee surgery. Remarkable stuff. He finished with just four points and one assist, but he was able to play 15 minutes and take some of the load off the starters.

Antawn Jamison scored 13 points off the bench, including a crucial five straight with less than five minutes to go in the fourth when L.A. was getting offense out of only Bryant to that point.

Misses: Earl Clark scored zero points, going 0-for-3 from the field in 24 minutes while picking up four fouls. He did collect five assists, however, often hooking up with Dwight Howard.

Howard had problems with the whistle-blowers, too, getting called for five fouls. He did notch 19 points, six rebounds and four assists in 33 minutes, however.

Howard had a careless violation with 2:16 left, stepping on the endline when he went to inbound the ball, thus turning it over when it was only a six-point game.

L.A. had 16 turnovers leading to 12 points for the Hornets.

Stat of the game: Every Lakers starter had at least four assists as L.A. recorded dimes on 26 of its 40 baskets.

Up next: It's on to Portland, where the Lakers will try to elude the hold the Rose Garden seems to have over them. They also will attempt to sweep a back-to-back for the first time all season. "Save the best for last, probably," World Peace said. He better hope so.

LOS ANGELES -- Metta World Peace had played possibly his last game with the Los Angeles Lakers when he suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee in late March.

The team listed his recovery time at a minimum of six weeks, a date well past the regular-season finale for a team that has no guarantee of making the playoffs. And there was no telling if he would be back after the offseason.

Yet just 12 days after surgery, World Peace was back in the lineup Tuesday, checking in to the game against the New Orleans Hornets to a partial standing ovation from the fans and without a brace on his left knee.

He had other ideas about his recovery time.

"I went online and was like, 'Yo, what was the fastest somebody ever recovered from a meniscus tear?' " World Peace recalled. "I was thinking it was going to say something like four weeks and somehow I read a week and I was like, 'Oh, then I'm the week kind of guy.'"

It helped that the surgery was not too invasive. World Peace said a "little flap" of meniscus was removed and "they're not stitching nothing together, they're just scoping."

To make his hope of being the one-week recovery guy, World Peace started his rehabilitation immediately. Even before the team was ready for him to begin it.

"I just started to do rehab once I got home," World Peace said. "Like, right away. No wasting time. And they were on the road so I had to call [Lakers trainer] Gary [Vitti] and [Lakers therapist] Judy [Seto] like, 'What do I have to do?' They were like, 'Wait till [we] get back.' I was like, 'No, I'm not waiting. Tell me what I got to do now so I can be ready to play.' And they just continued to tell me what I had to do and I just continued to try to rehab."

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Lakers' forward Pau Gasol joins Mark Willard and Mychal Thompson on ESPNLA 710 to touch on his aggressiveness, his relationship with Mike D'Antoni, and the trade rumors surrounding him.

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EL SEGUNDO, Calf. -- Kobe Bryant isn’t used to scoreboard watching this time of year. He isn’t used to having his playoff destiny rest in the hands of another team. But with five games left in the regular season for the Los Angeles Lakers, that’s exactly the position he’s in.

The Utah Jazz are half a game up on the Lakers and hold the tiebreaker, with four games left in their season. If the Jazz go 3-1, the Lakers would need to win their final five games to make the playoffs.

“Unless Utah goes belly up, too,” Bryant said. “You don't know what the hell is going to happen.”

Bryant smiled when he was told the Lakers have yet to put five good games together all season.

“We've put four (together),” Bryant said. “We've put four. The way I figure, you put four together, and there's no way we're losing the last game. There's just no way. So we'll put four together, and deal with the last one when we get there.”

The Lakers have their final back-to-back games Tuesday and Wednesday. They will play the New Orleans Hornets at Staples Center, then travel to play the Portland Trail Blazers. The Lakers haven’t swept a back-to-back this season and have made a habit of losing to Portland for years. Both trends will have to change if the Lakers are going to make the playoffs.

“We have to get it cracking a little bit,” Bryant said. “It’s a good time to start. We’ll just think about tomorrow and think about Portland when we get there. We just have to play better but we’ve been playing pretty well.”

LOS ANGELES -- Dwight Howard had every reason to be upset after the Los Angeles Lakers 109-95 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Sunday afternoon at Staples Center.

All he's supposed to do is play defense, right?

Lock up the middle of the key, protect the rim, cover up his teammates' mistakes. Well, he did that Sunday. He has been doing that ever since he looked himself in the mirror over the All-Star break and realized he needed to start delivering at that end of the floor.

The offense, the smiling, the dunks are extras. Nice when the Lakers have the time or the latitude in the standings for him to have fun with such things. But right now, with the Lakers fighting to salvage what's left of this disappointing season, the only thing that matters is defense.

Howard did that Sunday. He protected the rim, he intimidated shots, he got back on defense instead of trying to crash the offensive boards.

It was his teammates who regressed on this day. The Lakers' transition defense was horrendous again. Their rotations were slow or ineffective. And the Clippers exploited every one of their failings again and again.

"He should get frustrated when other guys are not doing what they should be doing," Lakers forward Antawn Jamison told ESPNLosAngeles.com. "You can't have one guy defensively do his job and everybody else is not doing theirs. That's been our point of emphasis the last couple games. But we backtracked [Sunday] instead of continuing to concentrate on that.

"And it shouldn't be happening now, especially with where we're at."

Who is that on?

"All of us," Jamison said. "Everyone."

Howard has a different way of showing his anger than most people are used to. He doesn't believe in bashing his teammates publicly. Instead he'll either say very little, or say just enough to clue you in on where his head is.

Sunday afternoon he was about as terse and upset as he has been at any point this season.

His answers were one or two sentences. His expression was sullen.

"We just need to play the right way," he repeated at least five times. "We know what we have to do to win."

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LOS ANGELES -- There's been little doubt who the best basketball team in Los Angeles is for a while now. The Los Angeles Clippers took care of that with a 17-game winning streak earlier this season and the first 50-win season in franchise history.

But just to put an exclamation point on that statement, the Clippers dealt a devastating blow to the Lakers' desperate playoff push Sunday with a 109-95 win at Staples Center.

The win marked the first time the Clippers have swept the season series from the Lakers since moving to Los Angeles. You have to go back to the 1974-75 Buffalo Braves for the only other time in franchise history it's happened.

The Lakers put up a fight early, but this one was never really close. The Clippers were too good. The Lakers looked too tired after what's been a frantic last month of the season as they try to salvage what's left of this awful season.

Kobe Bryant led the Lakers with 25 points but took 19 shots to get there. Twelve of his points came at the free-throw line.

It didn't help that the Lakers got virtually nothing from their starting backcourt of Steve Blake (eight points, two assists in 39 minutes) and Jodie Meeks (six points in 31 minutes.) while point guard Chris Paul led the Clippers with 24 points and 12 assists.

How it happened: The Lakers jumped out to an early lead, but the Clippers went on a run as soon as Dwight Howard came out of the game and wasn't around to protect the rim. The Lakers rallied to make it close at the end but just didn't have enough firepower to match the Clippers, who got another nice game from Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jamal Crawford (20 points) and ex-Laker Matt Barnes (12 points on 5-for-6 shooting).

What it means: Every game is critical for the Lakers the rest of the way as they try to nose out the Utah Jazz for the eighth and final Western Conference playoff berth. Because Utah holds the head-to-head tiebreaker, the Lakers must finish a game ahead of the Jazz to get in. All the storylines about the rivalry between the Lakers and Clippers were far less important Sunday than what's become a rather desperate playoff push for the NBA's highest payroll and most disappointing team.

Hits: Dwight Howard has the size and speed to dominate inside against the undersized Clippers. Pau Gasol has the skill and savvy to be effective against them as well. The Lakers' big men combined to score 37 points and grab 17 rebounds Sunday. You'd like to see more than four rebounds from Howard, but on this disappointing day, his 25-point performance passes for a positive.

Misses: Kobe Bryant came into the game having missed his past 16 3-point attempts, which makes sense considering the heavy minutes he's been logging and the effect that has had on his legs. Though he finally made a 3-pointer, he had an off shooting night overall (6 for 19). To his credit, though, he switched into facilitator mode when his shot wasn't falling and finished with 10 assists.

Stat of the game: The Lakers made just seven of their 24 3-pointers Sunday. Seven. It was ugly.

Up next: The Lakers have a day to recover from this one before their final back-to-back of the season -- at home against New Orleans on Tuesday and on the road in Portland on Wednesday. The Lakers have yet to sweep a back-to-back this season.

LOS ANGELES -- It was bound to happen sooner or later. The effect of all those minutes is taking a toll on Kobe Bryant.

What was left of him after playing all but 73 seconds the previous two games and 42 more minutes in the Los Angeles Lakers' 86-84 win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night could barely get up out of the chair afterward.

"I'm f-ing tired," Bryant said, when asked why his voice sounded so rough. Bryant is one of the best-conditioned athletes on the planet. He puts his body through rigorous workouts during the season and over the summers to be able to handle workloads like this. But even he might have a limit.

You could see it in his weary expression in the second half of Friday's game, but not in the stat sheet. Bryant had another 24 points, nine assists and five rebounds Friday. But toward the end of the game, he didn't seem to have his legs as he missed five of his six fourth-quarter shots.

Pau Gasol, for one, was a little concerned afterward.

"I'd like to see him be a little less aggressive early on and be more aggressive later in the game," Gasol said. "He needs his legs to be effective. And with the amount of minutes he's playing lately, it's normal that he's tired at the end of games.

"He's just playing a lot of minutes. I already said two games ago that I was concerned about it. But he's the best at making plays down the stretch. That's why he's got the ball in his hands, and we count on those plays, especially in close games like this one."

LOS ANGELES -- Kobe Bryant was running on fumes. Pau Gasol had just a few more jumps left in his sore right foot. Antawn Jamison's sprained right wrist was throbbing after another hard fall. Steve Nash was still in street clothes because of a sore hip and hamstrings.

But whatever the Los Angeles Lakers had left was left on the court Friday night in a gutty 86-84 win over the Memphis Grizzlies that kept their playoff hopes alive another night.

"This is the big push for us," a weary Bryant said after logging another 42 minutes Friday. "It's a very tough stretch, but we're excited for it. If you're going into the playoffs, you want to go in playing the best teams.

"There's no point in being all excited to get to the first round to get your [butt] kicked. You want to be going into the playoffs feeling like you're playing well, playing against top competition, so you're ready for a No. 1 seed."

These are the most desperate times of the season for the Lakers. All the turmoil, all the drama, all the intrigue and dysfunction that has landed them in this ugly place -- fighting for their playoff lives with a roster full of future Hall of Famers -- all that is the past.

The last six games of the season ultimately will determine whether they go down as one of the biggest flops in recent history, whether they're just a garden-variety disappointment or, maybe just maybe, there's a little magic in there after all.

And fittingly, with their backs up against the proverbial wall, the Lakers relied on the 1-2 punch that led them to back-to-back NBA titles not so long ago.

Bryant and Gasol combined to score 43 of the Lakers' 86 points Friday. They made the big plays and the small ones. They facilitated for the rest of the team, they organized the offense, but mostly they just led the way.

"You've seen us run it over the years," Bryant said. "It really is unstoppable."

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, with just Bryant and Gasol on the court together (and Dwight Howard off the court) Friday night, the Lakers had a plus/minus rating of plus-46 over 12 minutes. With just Bryant and Gasol on the court this season (and Howard and Nash off the court), the Lakers have a plus-20.4 rating, the highest of any of their two-man combinations.

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LOS ANGELES -- Playing the Memphis Grizzlies on any given night is like signing up for an MMA fight. The Griz are among the NBA's most physical teams. Nothing comes easy against them and their stout defense, which gives up a league-low 89.8 points a game.

Of course that's nothing new for the Los Angeles Lakers in a difficult season. The next thing that comes easy for the Lakers will be the first.

Friday was no exception as the Lakers held off the Grizzlies 86-84 to maintain a tenuous grip on the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference.

While L.A. always seemed in control of the game, Memphis was never out of it. It took a key free throw by Dwight Howard with 4.1 seconds left, after a key rebound by Howard off Mike Conley's miss with 4.1 seconds remaining, and every bit of energy Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol had left to pull out the win.

How it happened: The Lakers built a 13-point lead in the first half and a seven-point lead late in the third quarter. But Memphis is the kind of team that never seems to go away. The Grizzlies, who came in having won four in a row, rallied time and again to keep the pressure on the increasingly desperate Lakers.

Ultimately though, the Lakers pulled it out behind clutch performances from Bryant, (24 points), Gasol (19 points, 9 rebounds), Earl Clark (13 points) and Antawn Jamison (13 points).

What it means: After the Utah Jazz took care of business at home against the lowly New Orleans Hornets, the Lakers basically had to win this game to maintain their slim half-game lead in what's shaping up to be a dogfight for the last playoff berth. With Utah owning the season-series tiebreaker, the Lakers need to finish a game ahead of the Jazz to get in as the No. 8 seed. This win was critical.

Hits: With Memphis' interior defense collapsing on Howard every time he tried to post up, Gasol had room to operate out of the high post and had one of his most effective games of the season. Gasol made 8 of 14 shots to finish with 19 points and 9 rebounds.

Clark had another nice game, finishing with 13 points, 5 rebounds and one very impressive fourth-quarter block on Grizzlies guard Quincy Pondexter that you'll be seeing on "SportsCenter."

Misses: Steve Blake had been on a roll coming into this game, averaging 13 points on 52.9 percent shooting in the two games he'd filled in for the injured Steve Nash. But he struggled in this one, finishing with just six points and turning the ball over five times, all in the first half.

Stat of the game: Jamison needed to average 16 points a game over the Lakers' final seven games of the season to get to 20,000 career points. With a badly sprained right (shooting) wrist, it's not going to be easy. But the crafty veteran continues to soldier on, finishing with 13 points in 25 minutes Friday night.

What's next: The Lakers will have a light workout Saturday to prepare for Sunday's 12:30 p.m. PT tip against the Los Angeles Clippers. It figures to be a heated game, because it always is between these two teams, but also because both are playing for playoff seeding, the Clippers for the critical No. 3 seed, the Lakers for the No. 8 spot.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- There are very few people who can relate to the pain Louisville's Kevin Ware felt when he suffered a compound fracture in his leg last Sunday in the Cardinals regional final victory over Duke.

Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard is one of them.

"I broke my leg when I was 15," Howard said Friday morning. "It wasn't as severe as his, but I just know how I felt to sit out and miss important things, especially while you're young."

So Monday morning Howard picked up the phone and called Ware.

"I was just trying to make sure he was OK," said Howard, who still has two screws in his leg from the injury. "When I broke my leg, everybody thought that my career was done when I was 15. Look where it got me. I'm pretty sure it's going to push him to work even harder."

Howard said Steve Nash and Pau Gasol also got on the phone with Ware to offer encouragement.

Howard got his number through a mutual friend. The two were both raised in Atlanta and members of the same AAU basketball team, the Atlanta Celtics.

"Us Celtics stick together. That's the Atlanta Celtics," he said, catching the potential conflict with the Lakers hated rival. "We wear green, but that's for that team, the Atlanta Celtics."