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BILLUPS COMMENTS ON KOBE BRYANT INJURY

After practice Monday morning Clippers guard Chauncey Billups talked briefly about Lakers All-Star Kobe Bryant, who had surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon a day earlier. 

Billups sustained a similar injury on Feb. 6, 2012 in a game against the Orlando Magic and returned to the Clippers lineup less than 10 months after surgery. 

“I feel bad for him, of course," Billups said. "I don’t like to see anybody go through that, especially him. He’s a friend of mine, so it sucks for him. But it is what it is. And as I told a lot of people, with somebody like him, and I kind of felt the same way, I’ve pretty much accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish playing this game, he’s done that, too.

"You look for different challenges and you don’t want a challenge like that to come about, but it happened. This is a big challenge for him as it was for me. He’s going to be perfectly fine. He’s going to get back to playing at a high level, next season at some point, and be able to prove to everybody his toughness and his will.”

Asked if hearing doubters suggest his career was over helped fuel his comeback, Billups responded: “All the reasons why I wanted to come back were inside of me, not what I was hearing from everybody else.

"I understood what they were saying. I don’t really have anything to prove anymore and I’m an older player. It would maybe make sense if you didn’t know me. And I understood that. But at the same that’s just not how I’m built.”