Faigen (in light blue), with other reporters, interviews Kobe Bryant during the Laker’s final season.

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SB Nation’s Silver Screen & Roll writer and editor-in-chief Harrison Faigen discusses the present state of the Los Angeles Lakers as uncertainty swirls around a potential NBA return this season.

Time stamps may vary due to dynamic advertising:

7:56-9:03: “The only way to change this [mental health stigma] and have people be more comfortable talking about it is to have more people talk about it openly and have it not be that big of a deal. And so I want it to not be a big deal when I talk about being afraid to go outside or being afraid to go back to work. These are things we all feel on some level or another…We’re all feeling that, and everyone who’s struggling should be able to talk about that. One of the most insidious things, at least with my own mental illness, was it made me feel like I was weird and that there was something wrong with me and that you shouldn’t talk about it because other people aren’t going to be able to relate. What I’ve found through talking to other people…and the overwhelming feedback to the piece was that there a lot of other people going through these same things, and that appreciated that I was willing to talk about it.”

14:18-15:38: “Nobody was seriously thinking that LeBron [James] was washed [up], but there were more doubts about him going into this season than there probably ever have been…He’s mostly been a really important part of the Lakers defense, he’s been basically their sole competent ball handler on offense, and for him to be doing that at 35 with the workload that he needs to take on and not really load-managing…I think it’s probably as good of a 35-year-old season as anyone’s ever had.”

20:49-22:17: “I’ll put my hand up and fully admit that I was skeptical when the Lakers brought him back like I think almost everyone was. It was kinda like [Dion] Waiters, where you could look on paper at the fit and be like, ‘Yeah, they do need another big man. They need a guy who can take some center minutes.’ … At the same time, we’ve been saying Dwight could be that guy for his last eight seasons in the league basically, and he just has never wanted to do those things or showed prolonged commitment to doing those things…Bottom line: I think he knew this was his last shot. If this didn’t work out, you may not have seen a team sign Dwight Howard the next time around.”

26:05-26:17: “I just don’t get the sense that they would have given up everything that they gave up if they were not getting strong indications from Anthony Davis and Rich Paul and LeBron that AD was going to stay for a while.”

32:19-32:28: “For someone who covers the Lakers, it’s the best season that I’ve ever covered. It has also been easily the most exhausting.”

33:41-35:22: “The Clippers are…not only are they kind of the little brother team in the Staples Center building. I think sometimes a Lakers fan will [have an] ‘Ah, no, I don’t acknowledge them’ vibe, when really that’s the Lakers’ chief rival right now, whether you want to admit it or not. But there’s this dismissiveness of it and this kind of animosity between the fan bases, but it’s the most passive-aggressive rivalry I’ve ever seen. … It seems like there’s genuine dislike between the two teams as much as they’ve tried to downplay it throughout the year. Both teams know that they were constructed to beat the other one, and it really showed out there on the court. Those felt like playoff games.”

42:35-44:00: “The thing that I kept coming back to in the days after he passed was the last time that I saw him in person. … I remember we were walking around Disneyland, and I saw this really tall guy and I was like, “Wait a second. Is that Kobe?” He was just walking around with his kids. … He had the second-youngest on his shoulders, and he was bouncing her around, and he just looked really happy and just wandering around with his kids through Frontierland. It was cool to see him like that, and it was cool just to think back on that memory and how close he was with his daughters. It made it more sad in retrospect as well, but it’s the one that I kept coming back to because it really emphasized, I think, who he became as he aged, and he really had committed to being a family man and being a #girldad and that was where his passion had went.”

Check out Harrison’s story on mental health, which was referenced at the top of the interview.

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Music: “Who Likes to Party” by Kevin MacLeod.