I think as a player ages, people forget how good he used to be. Comparisons are always made between the hot and coming current players against players who are on the downhill of their careers. Of course Lebron is better than Kobe now, but career-wise, no way.
Tree-Mac I have always said that Kobe was very important to those titles when people said he rode shaq's coattail to a title. I'm not saying the Lakers would win a title without Kobe. I'm saying take Kobe off the Lakers when he won his titles and I think LeBron could win a title with those teams. Take LeBron off the Cavs and replace him with Kobe and I don't think Kobe would win a ring. That's all I'm saying. I could be wrong but it's just my opinion.
I made a mistake. I meant to say "down by 15 at the half of 4th quarter." Yeah, it was something like that. I remember I was stunned because I was rooting for LA to lose.
it's not just the last 5, but also when the game is within 5 points. again, the author said it's hard to say what people consider clutch b/c people have different opinions. you really can't go wrong with neither b/c kobe's production with those stats in the clutch is also ridiculous (his PER is 37). lebron is also clutch, unlike what people want to say. again, you're thinking clutch as in game winners. that's completely different. being clutch in crunch time means MAKING THE RIGHT PLAYS that LEADS TO SCORES. it doesn't always have to be a game winner. and lebron has a lot of shots that are game winners, just not buzzer beaters.
kobe averaged the same amount of assists now as he was in his prime. so no, shaq was not on the receiving end of anybody's assist b/c he was a great scorer with or without kobe. PER? kobe's posting his best PER in years while lebron got off to a slow start (RELATIVELY TO HIS STANDARDS), and it's BARELY behind kobe's. lebron will blow by him when the season is over. this is lebron's worst shooting season (and he's taking more jumpers than ever). and yet his fg% is still better than kobe's. and just to show you how great lebron is: he plays with dwayne wade (another great all-around player), and yet his all-around stats don't really suffer. great players produce wherever they go. 24.3 ppg, 6.5rpg, 7.2apg. you know he's the constant in the heat on both ends. but again, it's all about rings (or what people on here like to talk about). when lebron wins his, all this talk should end.
i'm sorry, if you saw that game, it was brian shaw's 3s from shaq's double teams that allowed them to come back. kobe to shaq alley oop gave them the lead. c'mon now. are you serious? before this year, lebron's all-around game was bested only by MJ and oscar robertson. his career was lacking only rings. he beats kobe in basically every category even if you look at their careers NOW. hell, he has more MVPs than kobe and his career is only half over.
LeBron would not have won with those teams. LeBron ball would have destroyed the Lakers chemistry... that Lakers team did so well because Derek Fisher was the one bringing the ball up. It wasn't always in Kobe's hands. That's why Kobe's great. He plays within the team, he isn't the team.
I'd like to see what those clutch stats look like after this season. LeBron's got better teammates to take on the load in the final minutes. More comparable to Kobe's situation. How does that impact his numbers?
This again? 80% of GM's give the nod to Kobe. So despite the statistical model conjured up by the ESPN stat guys: Kobe wins in the assessment of those most knowledgeable (who would also have access to the stats) And Kobe wins on hardware For now. I expect that will change as Kobe ages, and Lebron matures.
The main difference between the two (and this is mentioned in the article) is that Kobe is more dramatic. He takes shots over triple teams after pump faking six times. Sometimes he even makes these, and then Kevin Harlan will say "RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES FROM THE BEST FINISHER IN THE GAME!" and all of the casual sheepy fans will lap it up. But the truth is, most of the time he misses these shots and people think nothing of it. Just think back to the game the Lakers played against the Rockets earlier this year. The Rockets had no business winning that game. However, chucker#24 decided to "show up" in the 4th, and that was that.
There's a stat that measures this. It's called Usage Rate: http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/usg_pct_yearly.html Right now Kobe is leading the NBA in it despite having a stacked team.
"Better in the clutch" means different things. The question posed to the GMs was not how Haberstroh was interpreting "in the clutch".
Historically, Kobe's clutchness is one of the most overrated things in all of basketball... along with his defense. That said, last year Kobe was pretty ridiculous in the clutch.
Where did you get that "50 game winners" stat from? Kobe had 14 game winners in the 6 year span between the '03/'04 season and the '08/09 season (http://www.82games.com/gamewinningshots.htm ). Last year he had an amazing 6 game winners ( http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/trueh...=haberstroh_tom&page=KobeLeBronclutch-101222). That's 20 game winning shots since the start of the '03/'04 season. So, you're telling me that Kobe had 30 game winners prior to the start of the '03/'04 season? Interesting note from the 82games site: Kobe fans don't like to hear it, but while their man is #4 in the league in total game winners hit, he holds the top spot in a less glamorous category: most game winning opportunity missed shots! 42 - Kobe 35 - Vince Carter 33 - Joe Johnson, LeBron 32 - Crawford 31 - Billups Now we're not Kobe haters by any means and I will readily give him his due as one of the best NBA players (note however, I didn't say the best) but he certainly has an overblown reputation when it comes to the clutch shot: people remember the ones he hits, but not the ones he misses, and heck you think a 56 FGA to 1 assist ratio might be part of the problem? He does have a better record in the playoffs though, which we'll get to down below. That quote is based off the fact that during that six year span Kobe hit 14 game winning shots out of 56 attempts and only had one game winning assist during that span. Interesting to note that Kevin Martin was only in he league for 5 of the 6 seasons covered by the 82games.com stats but he did have 6 game winners in those 5 seasons. Carmelo Anthony also had the best FG% of anyone that attempted more than 10 game winners. McGrady and Francis both had 9 game winners and Yao had 6. Regarding the original story that was posted, it was comparing performance in the clutch and was based on 82games.com clutch time statistics. Clutch time is different that game winning shots. Here's 82games.com definition of each: Game Winning Shot Opportunity = 24 seconds or less left in the game, team with the ball is either tied or down by 1 to 2 points. Clutch time - 4th quarter or overtime, less than 5 minutes left, neither team ahead by more than 5 points Based on that definition the article is absolutely correct that James dominated everyone last season. http://www.82games.com/0910/CSORT11.HTM The interesting thing to note for Rocket fans is that Landry was #3 in clutch time fg% at an incredible .694(as we all knew), Scola was #2 on the team at .515 FG%, then Hayes at .417 FG%, Brooks .374 FG%, Lowry .313 , Ariza at .245 and Battier at .190 (Martin didn't have enough games to make the list). Those numbers tend to suggest that our perimeter players weren't very good in the last 5 minutes of close games.
