Bryant has bone spur, Lakers fall to Bucks

Kobe Bryant used a crutch to leave the arena after the Los Angeles Lakers' latest loss.

Following Los Angeles' 113-103 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday night, the Lakers said Bryant had a bone spur in his left foot. He left the arena using one crutch, but appeared to be walking without any pain.

Bryant led the Lakers with 30 points, leaving him four points behind Wilt Chamberlain (31,419) for fourth place on the NBA's career list. He played 36 minutes and didn't show any signs of difficulty during the game.

"Inflamed on me. I'll be all right," Bryant told Yahoo Sports.

The Lakers are eighth in the Western Conference, a half-game ahead of Utah for the final playoff spot.

Larry Sanders scored 13 of his career-high 21 points in the third quarter for the Bucks. He was 8 of 11 from the floor and had 13 rebounds.

Ersan Ilyasova and Brandon Jennings each had 20 points, Monta Ellis added 18 and Marquis Daniels had 16 to help the Bucks snap a four-game losing streak.

"Our attention to detail was a little bit better," coach Jim Boylan said. "Larry was great, really active. There was a lot of communicating going on. We've been struggling lately and when you struggle you can get into your own little world, and that's a bad place to be."

The Bucks hold the eighth playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, and have a seven-game lead over ninth-place Philadelphia with 11 games to go. However, they weren't playing as a unit, the effort and energy level were sagging, until the game against the Lakers.

"You need to be playing a collective game, whether it be offensively or defensively," Boylan said. "Tonight, for us was maybe breaking out of that shell a little bit."

Sanders noticed the change, too.

"It's easy to kind of get in slumps and get that dark cloud over your head and stay there," he said. "But, we fought our way through tonight. It's good and showed a lot of character. You only lose when you stay down. You've got to get back up."

Dwight Howard had 15 points and 15 rebounds for the Lakers and Steve Nash scored 16 points.

Howard said the Lakers needed to play better defense against the Bucks.

"We need to work together against these guys," he said. "We just didn't do that tonight. Defense needs to be a team effort each and every night."

NOTES:

Lakers forward Metta World Peace had surgery on Thursday on a torn meniscus in his left knee. He was injured in Los Angeles' loss to Golden State on Monday night and is expected to miss at least six weeks ... The crowd cheered when the public address announcer said Marquette beat Miami to advance in the NCAA basketball tournament ... Lakers coach Mike D'Antoni said Nash's back and hamstring "fired up on him. He toughed it out at first. I could tell he was hurting".

(China Daily 03/30/2013 page16)