Championships aren't all that matter. If you regularly come up big in the postseason, while somebody else comes up small, that matters to me, but just winning championships? Not really. Nobody wins a title by themselves, and often things just need to fall your way. Being more exciting and a fan favorite doesn't make you a better player. Those things only increase your odds of being overrated. Perimeter players are also going to be emulated a lot more by perimeter players.
What can he do? He can't really even play without the basketball in his hands. He isn't fast anymore. He isn't athletic anymore. He was never a great passer. He can't play defense. He isn't a rebounder. He's not even a great pure shooter. And also, he's what? 37? 38? Not many players make it in the NBA as long as he did. I'm just not sure what you even think he's capable of contributing at this point.
THANK YOU for saying everything i've always thought about Kobe. I still respect that he was a killer though. In a way, he's kind of this generations John Havlicek. I just had the Steph Curry conversation with a friend recently. I think it's too early, he thinks if he keeps it up all year, Steph's automatically already into the top 20 all time list. I think he needs another 3 seasons at minimum of dominance before jumping into the top 20 because he already has what? 6-7 years in the NBA ? 2 GREAT seasons out of 7 which includes one season where he only played 20+ games is just not going to cut it even for top 30. No matter how good he's been this year. It's like no one has T-Mac in the top 30 for his amazing 03 season or Tiny Archilbald for having the amazing season in which he led in scoring and assists. There are too many guys who consistently put up better overall stats compared to steph for 7-10 seasons and just 1 or 2. I honestly am not that impressed with his last season. The MVP should have been Harden's(even though i really dislike harden these days, but last year he was amazing and i give credit). Steph's 23.7 and 7.7 apg aren't eye popping #s that make you think of an MVP or all time great. Sure, the minutes played is impressive and the efficiency, but people will forget that and just look at the raw #s. He's been an all time great for 19 games now other than just being a 3pt specialist in years past IMO. Just not enough. Not positive on this, but statistically, DRose and Curry have been some of the worst MVP's i can think of.
I remember a long time he mentioned finishing his career in Italy. That's what he should have done after the Achilles recovery. He let his ego and the idea of tying Jordan for 6 titles get the best of him. I don't know where he and his fans got the idea that his 6 would be = to Jordans 6. Jordan was THE man and FMVP all 6 runs. It's really MJ's 6 to Kobe's 2 even though i could argue 1 of those FMVP's could have easily gone to Pau Gasol. There is zero argument for any of Jordans teammates being the FMVP. Pau deserving one of those FMVP's makes me question the criteria for FMVP. Like with Iggy last season, why is it that 1 series gets an award even though the real Playoff MVP award should have been Curry or LeBrons? Should they change it from FMVP, to overall Playoff MVP? Or a combination? It kind of sucks just ignoring the first 3 dominant rounds and then the player has a bad finals and doesn't get the FMVP. Post Season MVP + Player of the Series for every round including Finals(this is easier to give to a player that lost but put up big numbers like LeBron).
I remember once he missed a big shot. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m6V1-UraQAs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> At the 10:15 mark. He was probably just already planning his move to SA and just wanted it to look close so nobody got suspicious.
Many people just look at raw stats... but it sounds like you are smarter than that. It's impossible to ignore the efficiency and minutes played. The Warriors had a historically huge point differential. Steph just simply didn't play a ton of entire 4th quarters. Steph's per possession numbers were great.
I understand. But, why does that hurt someone like Harden who had to carry the load by himself for the whole season on a much worse team?
NBA basketball is the least team sport of all the team sports in North American sports. Maybe it's due to the 24 second shot clock or the marketing aspect of the sport, all the teams just run some sort of pick and roll or iso offense to their best players. Its not like baseball where you only get to bat one time per nine at bats no matter how important you are to the team. I didn't say Kobe was on better teams, I said you could say Kobe was on better teams as most Kobe haters always use as an excuse for why he has more championship wins than their favorite teams. But if you look at the teams that he was on, they were great teams because he was on them. For 2009 and 2010, he had Pau Gasol as a teammate which is huge, but the remainder of the team consisted of an inconsistent Lamar Odom, an over the hill Ron Artest, and always injured Andrew Bynum, a solid PG in Derek Fisher, and then a bunch of cobbled together players that are no better than the supporting cast for any NBA team at the time including Jordan Farmar, Josh Powell, Adam Morrison, Luke Walton, Sasha Vucecic, and Shannon Brown. Kevin Garnett was on a much greater team than what Kobe had for the time he was in Boston and I'd say Dirk had a much better supporting cast top to bottom as well. When Kobe and Shaq won the three rings between 2000-2002, they had a handful of good role players in Fox, Horry, Ron Harper, and Fisher, but the remainder of their team was full of misfits like an aging Glen Rice, inconsistent Devean George, Mark Madsen, etc...Those teams are often considered the greatest among all the NBA championship teams ever too along with the 80's Lakers and the 90's Bulls. But really, Shaq and Kobe carried that group of role players and misfits to a complete domination of the NBA for three years. They left one on the table in 2004 when Karl Malone and Horace Grant both being out vs the Pistons and the Lakers forced to play Luke Walton against the Pistons Rasheed Wallace. You think you know about basketball through stats and analytics that you consider advanced, but the truth is, there is so much of a situational aspect to basketball that you can throw all those numbers out the door. And if you want to use them, you should only count playoff numbers because regular season is a completely different animal than playoffs when it comes to teams/players to win titles. I mean, look at the Clippers. If you based success on regular season advanced analytics, the Clippers would be in the Finals at least a few times the last 4 years. The truth is, Kobe does take a lot of bad shots...but I don't think there is a player in the history of the NBA that makes impossible shots as well as Kobe did. And maybe in the playoffs, there is a need for a guy that can actually make tough shots when you are going up against aggressive defenses and refs holding back their whistles. Who knows. And one example I can give is game 7 of the 2010 Finals when Kobe went like 6-24 from the field and could not buy a basket. He still found a way to will his team to a victory by pulling down 15 boards and playing some staunch man on defense that caused a lot of bad passes. How do those numbers appear in the "advanced analytics"? I'm a software engineer so of course I believe in numbers and statistical analysis. And for MLB, I totally believe in sabremetrics because the game is segregated very well. But there is just too much variation and situational noise in the NBA that I can't buy using the data more than just a reference point. Maybe the spray chart to get players tendencies so as to defend certain players better. But if a team truly wanted to use analytics properly in the NBA, they would need to establish a clean environment so all the players are judged on even ground to establish a base. So this means I would have every player on the team take 1000 shots from key points on the court every week unguarded and with a hand in their face. Based on these numbers, then you can formulate a gameplan as to where to get open shots for certain players and where you can let your key scorers take contested shots. Otherwise, using regular season game data, you have apples to oranges from player to player and every game is not even important to every player until the playoffs start anyway. Most Lakers fans didn't even pay attention to the NBA until the playoffs started anyway. With all that said, in the grand scheme of things, when people look back, nobody is going to see that Kevin Garnett or Dirk had better offensive efficiency than Kobe. They will just remember grand moments like the 81 point game, the game winning playoff moments, and Kobe holding the NBA trophy 5 times.
It's pointless to argue about how great Kobe is because it's such a polarizing conversation for some reason, but Kobe did also play a significant role in the NBA horizon when he won his first championship. Before Kobe was drafted out of high school, it was only big men that were perceived to have any chance to succeed straight out of high school. And it was only certain players like Kevin Garnett or Jermaine Oneal that were really considered in the lottery. But when the Kobe won his first title in 2000 as a key leader of the team along with Shaq, the paradigm totally shifted and almost every team looked to high school players first and especially for their lottery picks. If it weren't for Kobe being a part of that wrecking crew with Shaq in 2000-2002, guys like Lebron or TMac may not have made a jump straight to the NBA and, if they did, they would not get the immediate playing time that they did. It's so comical how so many people on this board have so much hate and disrespect for Kobe. You all point at your stats and think you know about basketball. Meanwhile, guys like Kevin Durant, Lebron, Carmelo, Paul George are all coming out and saying he was their MJ and their idol. These guys all must no nothing about basketball because they only play the game. They don't surf the internet 15 hours a day looking for some random stat that they can call an advanced analytic to prove that Kobe is just an average player.
I knew Kobe wasn't a great player anymore, he hasn't been for a while. But it's amazing just how done he is. By the on/off numbers he's one of the worst players in basketball. Meanwhile Tim Duncan continues to be one of the most effective players in the entire league with elite on/off numbers.
Kobe did tear his achilles at the end of the 2012/2013 season. He averaged 27.3 PPG that year so there didn't appear to be any decline prior to the injury. I mean, I'm sure Duncan would also have issues coming back after an achilles tear in his later years. Plus, Duncan is ok taking a backseat to guys like Leonard, Parker, and now Aldridge. Kobe never seemed to grasp that concept. His decline was not a slow degrade, but a sudden plummet after injury. Much like Peyton Manning this year.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kobe says he sensed PHI players were in awe after he hit first 3 shots: “[Like] ‘Holy crap, is this going to be an 81-[point] situation?'”</p>— Baxter Holmes (@BaxterHolmes) <a href="https://twitter.com/BaxterHolmes/status/671897422344413184">December 2, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> HAHAHAHAHAHA
What sucks about Kobe leaving is that the Lakers can be good again quick; somehow they always make the big splash and now that Kobe is gone and how big the LA market is, lot of top tier free agents can actually start taking LA as a serious landing destination
