Come on man. We all saw that those Bulls did when MJ took a year off. They won almost the same amount of games and lost in game 7 to a Knicks team that it took our Rockets 7 games to beat. The Jordan Bulls were so stacked. I'd take them over any Lakers roster Kobe ever had.
As much as I don't care for Kobe, this is a bad comparison. Kobe came in as a bench player on a stacked Lakers team, while MJ and Lebron both had the team to themselves when they entered. Not saying he's on par with them as a passer, but that stat is quite skewed. If you just limit it to games where Kobe was a primary playmaker getting major minutes, I doubt the numbers are nearly that bad.
W/e fella, you act as if I'm the most fervent of fanboys when all I try to do is preach appreciation and the lessening of hate. A stat is a stat, it's what how you interpret it to fit an agreement that matters. Kobe is a selfish player, I've never defined that. Yet if you ask the players than have had success in this league like butler, Odom, CDr, Meeks whose worked under Kobe, they all have nothing but praise for him as a teammate, inspiration, and mentor. being challenged by, and witnessing the determination and dedication of a true great...I'd call that the ultimate "assist". o and btw. 5 championships....I just gotta add that bit.
Excluding Kobe's rookie year: 32 times Excluding Kobe's rookie + sophomore season when he didn't start. He played heavy minutes sophomore year. 19 Jordan 7 times LeBron 2 times
That doesn't matter, he has 5 rings and he was a big key in all 5 of those rings. I swear Kobe is the only player I know where people mentions that 3 of his rings he wasn't the best player on the team. Who cares he was a big part in all 5.
The ability to tinker with BR never ceases to amaze me. FWIW, it seems that Kobe has similar assist% as MJ. While Lebron has always been much better. Also, James Harden seems to be progressing similarly to Kobe as a passer for the early part of his career. Pretty weird because Harden doesn't look like a ball-hog. While Kobe has had this stigma for his entire career.
Obviously you. I was half trolling. Lmao I get that he is one of the best individual player. He is just no assist guy. The guy is a gunner. BTW the fact people are questioning him is because himself. The guy wanted be the No 1 guy even when Shaq was there..... He could have rode Shaq's coattail to 2 more championships easily lol.... he would have 6 or 7 championships if he were smart
It's mentioned because Kobe is also the only player who wasn't the main piece for the majority of his titles that's constantly being compared to dudes who were a lot more. If you didn't see stuff like "Kobe needs 1 more ring to catch MJ" then you wouldn't hear rebuttals like "he wasn't the main piece for most of those titles". When have you ever heard anyone say Gasol needs 1 more ring to pass Hakeem, for example?
Assist % is misleading in this way if I'm reading it right, because you can be a ballhogging chucker and end up with a high assist %. It's defined as: Let's say Kobe takes 100 shots, makes 50 field goals in a game. While he's on the floor, his teammates 2 shots, and make only 1 - combined - which is set up by Kobe. Kobe's assist percentage for this game is an outrageously high 100%, right? But he wasn't doing much distribution for teammates.
Get this: A game after Kobe gets no assists, the Toronto PGs Lowry and Calderon combine to get 22 assists but no points in a blow out win.
Well comparing Kobe to MJ and Lebron in terms of passing is not even close. Kobe gets compared to MJ because of body type and his prolific scoring attack, but MJ and Lebron were always willing (and INCREDIBLY gifted) passers. Whatever the real numbers, do people actually want to get down on a guy who has been dominant in the NBA for over a decade because he doesn't compare to 2 all-time great passing players in one facet of the game?
Detailed formula AST% Assist Percentage (available since the 1964-65 season in the NBA); the formula is 100 * AST / (((MP / (Tm MP / 5)) * Tm FG) - FG). Assist percentage is an estimate of the percentage of teammate field goals a player assisted while he was on on the floor. So you are reading it mostly right. In your hypothetical, Kobe would have 50% because the other FG was unassisted. OTOH, suppose Kobe's teammate A set up Kobe with 10 assists on 10 of Kobe's FGs. He'd still only have an assist% of ~20% since Kobe made 50 FGs. So yes, in a skewed scenario, you are correct. But in the NBA world, there does not seem to be this sort of bias at work. Here's a list of the best assist% leaders in NBA history. http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ast_pct_season.html Basically a list of the best passers in NBA history. And many whom were not high scoring players, like Stockton and Nash. Back to your original point though. In your hypothetical situation, should one dismiss Kobe for only getting 1 assist in that game? The answer is maybe not. Perhaps Kobe is an all-world passer. But because he's an even better scorer, he never had the opportunity to assist on more basket. And really, that is the point of the any "???%" stat, to award players who make the most of his opportunities. If there were only 2 FGs to be assisted on, then having 1 assist is pretty good. But if there were 100 FGs to be assisted on, having 4 assists may not be a big deal. And the player with 1 assist on 2 FGs may actually be the more talented passer. And in real life basketball, there are always enough shot attempts by teammates to judge if you can put your teammate into scoring position or not. Not even Kobe puts up all of his team's shots.
This was probably my favourite game of the recent era. I remember the commentators praising Adelman for constantly switching between Artest and Battier to cover Lebron (because they were elite defenders with polar opposite play styles).
