Still MJ didnt win until he got pippen and Grant .. As much as I hate Kobe he's a great competitor a clutch player and the best in the last decade .. Defenitly one of the best five players of alltime .. But also most surely not the GOAT
even top 5 is debatable i would take magic bird jordan shaq olajuwon duncan lebron over kobe to start a team and thats just in the past 30 years, this is not including other players in the past eras. dont get me wrong kobe is an amazing player and an all-time great but i think his "greatness" is often exaggerated because he plays in LA and in an era where stars/stats are more glorified in the media than ever. but its all subjective, kobe/lakers fan will rank him top 5 or GOAT but IMO Kobe is a top 20 player of all time for sure possibly top 15
You are correct. Also, Olajuwon is only the GOAT in Houston. In the real basketball world outside Houston he is considered a great player but nowhere near the basketball god that he is portrayed to be here in this great city.
Jordan picked him to be his center over every other center in the history of the NBA Kobe asked for his tutelage this past offseason on his post up game If people outside of Houston don't recognize him as a basketball god at least some of the all time greats knows how great Dream was.
That only calls into question his ability to project how non-NBA players will do in the NBA. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Jordan considered Hakeem the greatest center he ever played against.
Kobe is about the only player I can think of that opposing fans don't want to credit for titles because of his teammates. Giving him credit for Odom and Horry is comedy. Role players. Was Kobe supposed to be the only player expected to win a title with talent like Smush, Walton, Kwame and Cook? You think Shaq, Kareem, Magic, Bird, and Russell were winning so many w/o some of the best talent in the league? Do you think Jordan didn't need Pippen and Grant/Rodman?
Gasol being the guy that had more than half the non-Laker fans saying things like, "Hm, he's 0-12 in the playoffs, what's he ever done?" After he won in 09, the tune magically changed. He became a superstar big and a surrogate to fill in the "Kobe can't win w/o ______" claim. Lamar Odom. Heh... The guy couldn't play a full season with 80% effort if his life depended on it. Odom was Houdini for the first 40 games of this season alone. He's almost exactly the same player he was as a ROOKIE.
Hey, if I were the GM of the Rockets I'd be glad to trade a consummate professional in Jared Jeffries for the lazy ass scrub named Odom on your Lakers team. Thanks.
Kobe is about the only player I can think of that fans try to call the GOAT using as justification his championships won when he wasn't the best player on his team. If Scottie Pippen had led a team to a championship after MJ retired would he be considered the GOAT? Of course not.
So if Kobe has one less ring than MJ and still has vastly inferior career stats (even with MJ playing way, way past his prime) somehow Kobe is the GOAT? Ok.
Gasol was great, before he joined the lakers, he was in a bad team, he played with scrubs. but when he joined the lakers, they were better players, so he was relieved that he didnt have to carry the team, he could play his game. and how many Kobe titles won without Gasol, Pau was a big help to the Lakers, especially they got Gasol with giving almost nothing.
