Watching Lebron bores the hell out of me. He takes the fun out of watching basketball His stats are great to read though, so he's probably better than Kobe.
Watching a guy who can be the teams primary scorer, primary distributor and primary defender (covering PG's to PF's) is boring? You are hard to please.
I should probably explain. The thing I enjoy the most about watching Lebron is his passing and defense. His court vision and passes are very impressive, so are his perimeter shut down defence on smaller and quicker players. The thing I hate watching him do is scoring. I always see him dribble super hard into the lane, lowers his shoulders and he will either jump over everyone and finish or get fouled just because he's too damn fast and strong. Also His jumpers are ugly, but they are pretty accurate of late so i can't say much. His post moves, while pretty effective really involves him just out powering the defender. I hate watching him play kinda like how I hated watching Shaq bulldoze everyone back in the early 2000's.
I'm not counting rings or using championships to rate players. I am comparing the two as per the thread title. they have both been rated the top of their generation. both have tasted failure as well as success. Kobe's legacy , RIGHT NOW, stands stronger than LeBron's. we're just making arbitrary comparisons here. start this thread in 8 more years and we'll see where I rate them
It also tells us that using team achievements as the "case-closed" ultimate measuring stick for individual success (when team achievemetns are notoriously dependent on factors beyond individual control) is dubious and arbitrary, which is why the Skip Bayless' of the world are so quick to fall back on it. Example: Was Yao an epic fail against the Jazz in the Playoffs because the Rockets lost? No, lots of folks (Luther Head, Rafer etc) contributed to that loss. Was Yao an epic fail against the Jazz because he shot poorly, was bottled up by Mehmet Okur and turned the ball over a lot, didn't box out, and let Boozer go off and grab critical rebound after critical rebound in key moments, contributing to the loss? Yes.
Based on what? Lebron has a clear advantage in efficiency and statistics. He also has 3 MVP's to Kobe's 1. And he's also had inferior teammates in Cleveland.
Whenever Derrick Rose's stats and efficiency continually surpass Stockton's for a number of years, then yes, he'll have surpassed him.
Except by failure you mean team failure. 2009 was LeBrons most ridiculous playoff run in which he posted an absurd 37 per over 14 Games. Thats like 35 - 9-9 in a slower paced era which is crazy. Thats the highest PER ever in a sustained playoff run and second best ever. (Top is Hakeem with 39 in 88 but it was over a 4 game 1st round loss to Dallas) But that year for LeBron is implicitly chalked up as a failure because they couldnt get past a better Orlando team which is just silly
