When Kobe Bryant was asked his thoughts on the pressure facing Dwight Howard to return in the wake of Pau Gasol being ruled out for 4-8 weeks with a torn plantar fascia, he said: "We don't have time for [Howard's shoulder] to heal. ... We need some urgency."

Bryant, notorious for playing through injury, senses the Lakers season hinges precariously, but today Howard hit back at all his critics. He even went as far as to say that Kobe wasn't a doctor, and that he wasn't going to risk his long-term health.

"I want to play," Howard said after participating in shootaround in advance of the Los Angeles Lakers' game against the Boston Celtics  on Thursday. "I mean, why wouldn't I want to play? But at the same time, this is my career, this is my future, this is my life. I can't leave that up to anybody else because nobody else is going to take care of me. So, if people are pissed off that I don't play or if I do play, whatever it may be, so what? This is my career. If I go down, then what? Everybody's life is going to go on. I don't want to have another summer where I'm rehabbing and trying to get healthy again. I want to come back and have another great year. That's what I want to do."

Bryant later refuted claims he put added pressure on his teammate to return.

"There's an urgency to be out there, but it's not at the cost of making his shoulder worse," Bryant said after shootaround. "I've always said if he was healthy enough to play and there was a situation where he wasn't going to make it any worse then he should be playing. There should be an urgency about that, but I don't think I said anything that was different [than what I said before]."

Image via:  Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports