NBA Insider with Ken Berger

After staying quiet about his desire to be traded since the beginning of the season, Kobe Bryant opened up today and confirmed for the first time that the Knicks were on the short list of teams he asked to be traded to this past summer.

“They were, yeah,” Bryant told a small group of reporters when asked if the Knicks were among the teams for which he’d agree to waive his no-trade clause. After the Knicks and Bulls, Bryant said it was the Mavericks and Suns, marking the first time he has publicly disclosed the list.

Bryant made the revelation after the Lakers practiced today at an Upper East Side health club in preparation for tomorrow’s game against the Knicks.

Even more intriguing, Bryant said that no teams have been taken off the list, which his agent, Rob Pelinka, formally submitted to Lakers G.M. Mitch Kupchak after Bryant publicly asked to be traded on May 30.

Asked if he removed the Knicks from consideration because of the uncertainty and turmoil churning inside Madison Square Garden, Bryant said, “No, I just kind of pushed everything to the back burner and stopped thinking about trades.

“It wasn’t something where I was scratching teams off or anything like that. I just stopped thinking about it because once the season got under way, my focus had to be here. It couldn’t be split, because I’d be doing a disservice to my teammates.”

Asked if the list is still on the backburner and if his formal trade request is still on the table, Bryant said, “Call Mitch Kupchak and see what he thinks about that. I don’t get into that. … It’s all what Mitch wants to do, really. Mitch and Dr. [Jerry] Buss. It’s all on them. They can either trade me or not trade me. It’s completely their decision.”

As the only player in the NBA with a complete no-trade clause, Bryant can veto any deal. He can also pressure the Lakers to move him because he can opt out of his contract after the 2008-09 season.

And while he is surprised that the Knicks have spiraled so rapidly into disaster, he wouldn’t rule out a trade to New York if it were presented to him.

“I would look at it as just another challenge to prove that you can win,” Bryant said. “That’s how I would approach it. I wouldn’t be down about it. I’d just work that much harder to try to prove that if we do work hard, we can win ballgames.

“Every storm passes,” said Bryant, who then was asked if the chaos surrounding the Knicks and their embattled coach, Isiah Thomas, would frighten him.
“I don’t scare too easily,” he said.

Bryant said he is “very happy” as a Laker, but wouldn’t discuss whether he’s accepted the fact that he’ll remain with the team through the February trade deadline and beyond.

“I just focus on each game, man,” Bryant said. “That’s all I do. Since training camp, we all said that we weren’t going to address the situation and we weren’t going to talk about it, and I’m going to continue to live up to my end of the bargain.”

When I gave Bryant a chance to say definitively that he no longer wants to be traded, Bryant took a pass.

“That’s your opinion,” he said. “Say what you want to say. I’m not going to address it. I’m not going to address the situation. I’m here to focus on our team and focus on one thing and one thing only and that’s the New York Knicks.”

Evidently, in more ways than one.

At one point, Bryant had some fun with a reporter who asked flat-out if he would agree to a trade to the Knicks if the Lakers presented one to him.

“If a Martian came to me and said, ‘You could go to Mars tomorrow,’ I probably wouldn’t entertain it because Mars is a little too far for me,” Bryant said. “I don’t get into hypotheticals.”

Reminding Bryant of his statement back in May that he probably would OK a deal to another planet in the solar system, I asked him, “What about Pluto?”

“Pluto?” he said. “Jupiter maybe.”

Yes, Kobe’s world never stops spinning.

The Knicks declined to comment today on their role in the Bryant saga. The team has been aware since the summer that New York was among Bryant’s chosen destinations, but talks have never advanced beyond the exploratory stage.