Lebron James Is good Hes a Beast In Scoring. Kobe Bryant is A All-Around Player and can lead his team
Lebron has 3 MVPs, how many does Kobe have? Why does having more rings suddenly mean you're the better player, when everyone and their mother knows Kobe's always had a dominant big man by his side when he won all those rings? OTH, Lebron had an otherwise lottery Cavs team and took it into the Finals, Kobe had Lamar Odom and a bunch of vets and couldn't even get past the 1st round. Saying you'll wait 8 more years is just stupid, are you telling me if you put Lebron in Kobe's shoes he wouldn't win 5 rings? If he could win a ring with an inconstent Wade, injured Bosh and Battier he could damn well win 5 rings with prime Shaq, prime Gasol and Bynum
LBJ isn't just a beast in scoring, he rebounds better, defends better and passes better than Kobe. He's better than Kobe at everything, gigantic ego included.
So has D. Rose won 3 MVPs, gotten a ring and set NBA records for one of the most efficient players ever while guarding the other team's best player?
Does he need 3 MVPs, a ring and set NBA records for one of the most efficient players ever while guarding the other team's best player in order to surpass Stockton who has no MVP award or ring? If not, what does he need?
I have no idea, and honestly I don't care. I didn't create this thread to debate Stockton vs Rose, its about Lebron and Kobe. My point is Lebron and Rose are so different there's no point bring out someone unrelated to it. If you want to create a Rose vs Stockton then create your own thread, don't derail mine with it.
If he puts up 4-5 more seasons like he has doen in the last 2 he definitely has an argument. With Rose & Stockton though it's colored by position. Stockton's assist %'s and records are going to be almost impossible for anybody to beat, and Rose doesn't even come close....so you will still have folks arguing that Stockton was a better PG than Rose, who is a much more devastating scorer than Stockton; but there's a well-chronicled aversion to nominal point guards who score points in this league so there will be those who argue that Stockton was therefore better.
Right. To sum it up, Stockton has achieved more in his career than Rose has. Rose can surpass Stockton once he becomes the one who achieved more.
Except...Rose has played 4 seasons to Stockton's 19 (and had some of his best seasons toward the end of his career rather than in the front...and without a wide statistical difference between the two), and Kobe played 16 to Lebron's 9 (with LeBron's best already at a higher level by a wide margin and matched only by Jordan, Wilt, Shaq etc) - do you not understand the proportionality here?
No doubt Lebron is closer to surpass Kobe than Rose to surpass Stockton. When Kobe got his third ring at age 24, the proportionality based argument of him surpassing Jordan was strong too. In the end, only time can tell and only the player himself can prove it.
Some of you need to look at Kobes 2001 to 2002 2 title run. Ridiculous how dumb some of you look Lebron needs to get 5 to be in same convo as Kobe
Kobe has appeared in 7 NBA Finals with 2 Finals MVP's and five rings. LeBron has appeared in 3 NBA Finals with one ring and one Finals MVP. lol the reason why I said wait 8 more years is because Lebron will have earned it by then! I don't play hypothetical what if LeBron was in Kobe's shoes. He's not. yet. but he will be. therefore he hasn't surpassed Kobe. it's not neanderthal or stupid to see it that way. take off your assumptions that everyone is a fanboy of one or the other.
I did. Which one of those runs did he drop 30/10/5 on 50% while also serving as the primary defender? I don't recall him shooting 50% or being the primary wing defender on any of his title runs.
Define "pass". It seems like you are hung up on marks of longevity. Do you think Rose hasn't been as successful as Mark Jackson since he's top 5 in assists, based on him playing forever? LeBron has higher career averages, and all of his numbers at the same stage are higher. He just has less titles and hasn't played as long. But just like it was clear that Sayers was a beast without paying forever, you can say the same about LeBron. 9 seasons of data is a lot. When he got his 3rd ring at the age of 24 no one talked about him passing Jordan because he didn't lead either of those teams to the title.
It's neanderthal and stupid from an analytical perspective. You're trying to rank individual players based on team accomplishments and largely ignoring individual accomplishments.
I'm going off the scope of their careers. LeBron just entered his prime. LBJ will unequivocally surpass Kobe. has he done it yet? 73 % of clutchfans says "no"
yeah, now that lebron has a title and it might be ok to actually point out that he's done some good things in his career, i feel like more people need to recognize how crazy that playoff run was. a 38-8-8 conference finals against the #1 defense in the league with a buzzer beating 3 to win 1 of his team's 2 games? a 37.4 PER for the whole playoffs over 3 rounds? as you mentioned, the best ever for a multi-series playoff run. and in the shotclock era, it's first by a mile. the 2nd best PER ever? 32.4, by some guy named kareem. even MJ, the regular season and playoff PER king, never went above 32.0. a 37.4 to 32.4 advantage in PER is crazy. that's like Secretariat at the Belmont. except if Secretariat had been racing every triple crown winner in history and not just 5 other horses from 1973. and it came after a 31+ PER regular season. you could make a pretty good argument it was the best individual season anyone ever had.
and while lebron has undoubtedly been a better player for the majority of his career than kobe ever was at his peak and just pulled off a championship run kobe could never dream of***, i would say he needs a 2nd title to surpass kobe along with some longevity. if he won a 2nd title with a playoff performance similar to this one he would have the same number of "team leader" titles as kobe, each more impressive than kobe's. throw in the huge advantage he has in most every other respect and i don't see how you could make much of an argument (now hakeem and lebron if lebron won another would be a better argument). of course this all depends on lebron staying healthy which can never be taken for granted. interesting to think of lebron paired with shaq for the first 8 years of his career when you consider he was in 27/7/7 mode by his 2nd year. 2 of the few 30+ PER guys on the same team for 5 or 6 years (though being on the same team would bring those numbers down a little probably). oh, and 2006/7 kobe would have 2 titles with the heat? lol. he probably would have played better against dallas in the finals but it's hard to see him beating the bulls to even get to the finals and doing the things lebron did in that series (especially with wade struggling so much) against that level of defense (and against rose). and of course this year there's no way he could have put up the offensive and defensive performance lebron did in the playoffs. lebron was having to come up with "no-one's-had-these-box-scores-in-50-years" 40/18/9 and 45/15/5 performances just to keep the heat alive, instead of being able to rely on shaq or the best front line in basketball to provide the mismatches that really separated the lakers from the rest of the league in those 5 title years. lebron was playing 43 minutes a game (and going 48 in the really big games) with a 30 PER and exerting tremendous energy on defense guarding anybody and everybody he needed to.
this is similar to when dirk won his ring and evryone started saying he was a top 5 player all of a sudden and possibly the greatest PF to ever play the game.
