I think that someone pointed out that Kobe couldn't get his team past the first round of the playoffs until they were gifted with one of the best big men in the game and you responded by comparing that to Mario Elie arriving on the Houston Rockets and them going from contenders to champions. Unless you were trying to say Elie had the same impact on the Rockets as Gasol had on the Lakers, I don't really see your point.
When did someone say that? The post I responded to said Gasol made a 'noticeable difference' to the Lakers. My point was basically to say that that isn't saying much. Of course he made a difference, how could he not? That doesn't really support the statement that Bryant had "more help than anyone in the history of the NBA". If you only look at post-Shaq, that is a pretty dumb statement. I'm sure Mr. C was including the Shaq years though when he posted that.
I didn't put up that video, the Heat team did. I would guess that's a representative sample of LeBron's training. And his move is full of technical flaws and far from a high % shot.
LeBron has taken a total of 8 shots against Kobe in 6 years. Yes, that seems like a reasonable sample size to write an article entitled "Bryant better than James head-to-head".
Kobe took 3+ times more ISO than LeBron in their 1on1 was enough to show their confidence level when facing each other. LeBron had the chance to do more ISO, he just didn't choose to. It's not like when LeBron was guarding Kobe, Kobe refused to guard LeBron.
LeBron doesn't choose the plays. This is the NBA not streetball, what the fudge does confidence level have to do with this? You think Mike Brown called up isolation plays and James backed down? If it was remotely possible to run isolation repeatedly without help defense coming you think the Cavs wouldn't salivate at iso'ing a guy who had 50 pounds of muscle on the other? Come on people...
It's a little hard to iso a guy when he's backed by three giants in the frontline. If these two played one-on-one, Lebron would destroy Kobe. Five years ago, Kobe might have had a chance, but now he is old & gimpy & still takes awful shots. He's shooting like 10% in the pre-season being guarded by scrubs.
Kobe got 10 all nba defensive team for a reason. And he had too much pride to use help defender when challenged. It's all regular seasons game. It's not like too much was at stake and the coaches wouldn't give them some freedom to showcase in national TV.
What giant are you talking about? Bynum wasn't a factor before 2007-08. And by X'mas when the 2 teams would play, he's already injured. Ben Wallace alone beat all lakers not named Kobe combined for all nba defensive team presence like 10 times.
Yes, he's the most overrated player in the history of the game. When you're lit up by Bruce Bowen and Jared Dudley, you're not that great of a defender.
"Kobe's got five rings, six game winners [last season], 23-straight points in [Game 5 of the Finals] off mostly jump shots," Artest elaborated. "[He's] the biggest shot maker, big shot maker. So, that said, Durant's the second best player in the NBA." More on the Lakers For more news, notes and analysis of the Lakers, check out the Land O' Lakers blog from the Kamenetzky Brothers. Blog When asked where James ranks on his list, Artest excluded the back-to-back MVP from consideration. "I only count to two," Artest said. "I've been out of school for 10 years, so I only count to two." http://sports.espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/news/story?id=5686339 that's what ron artest thinks. he doesn't even care for lebron.
And? Shaq had 70 lbs and 2-3 inches on Hakeem. Doesn't mean you can just back down a player at will, and it's not like Lebron has a drop step or really anything in the post. Even Ronron can't really push Kobe around at will, and Ron is much stronger than Lebron. Then add to that, the post game isn't as effective as face up for a 1 on 1 since if u stop dribbling, well gg, and you don't really want to start a post up 25 feet out against a good stealing player and hope you get it all the way to the basket, lol (i mean seriously, in a 1 on 1, which of those 2 is going to be stupid enough to start defending at 10 feet out?).
A lot of that i think is player style, Lebron's style is pretty easy for him to defend (as we saw in his year here), Durant is athleticism and shot making, everything Ron isn't
people want to bring up shaq or ron or whoever is big like lebron, but the difference is lebron has a lot of SKILLS to go with that freakish size.
durant averaged 35% fg v. ron artest last year. he made durant looked like an average player. if you read the rest of the article, you can see he doesn't really like lebron (hell, he doesn't even acknowledge him). lebron v. lakers last year: 31.5ppg, 4rpg, 9apg on 50% shooting. so no, lebron's style is not easy for artest to guard.
lebron's performance against artest is up and down really and has been pretty average over the years, but if the rest of the team plays terribly (like it did in their 2nd matchup against Cleveland, **** happens), it really comes down to how much effort they need to put in (the lakers are notorious slackers on defense during the regular season).
And with the craptastic performance lebron put in against Pierce (who Artest knows he's a better defender than), I'm not so sure Ron is that afraid of lebron in a playoff series either.
Lebron's performance against Pierce was better than Kobe's performance against Ray Allen, another guy not known as a defensive stopper. Lebron, however, (successfully) took on the challenge of shutting down Boston's top scorer at the same time. Kobe decided to guard a point guard with no jump shot so he could take it easy and let his bigs help when he still got beat off the dribble.
