Los Angeles Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak has been the most vocal amongst the team's brain trust about 2015-16 possibly being Kobe Bryant's last year in the NBA. Bryant's two-year, $48.5 million contract extension is up at the end of 2016, at the same time that the NBA's salary cap rises and the team can offer huge heaps of money to free agents to help the Laker franchise turn it over. [ Follow Dunks Don't Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball ] Co-owners and business and basketball chief operators Jeannie and Jim Buss haven't been as direct. In fact, if anything, Jim Buss was as direct as he could be in a recent interview in pointing out that Bryant's 2016 retirement isn't a fait accompli. From a talk with Eric Pincus at the Los Angeles Times, when asked if this was Kobe Bryant's final season : "We're going to approach it like it is, but that doesn't mean it is," Buss said of Bryant. "I'm not going to sit there and say, 'This is it, Kobe, you're done,' because it's not my decision, it's his decision." […] So is this Bryant's final year with the team? "My arms are like this," Buss said, holding his arms wide open, about Bryant's future. "He just has to...