To the contrary, I am much more objective than most because I give more credit to stats than observation. Both are flawed, but observation much more so because of our bias. So far this year in a small 5-game sample, Gasol has been the best player on the Lakers and it's not that close.
Excuse? LOL, why do you need excuse when you are winning championship and Final MVP? You can't stop media saying what they want to say. But Kobe never used his torn ligament in pinky as the excuse for the loss to Celtics 2 years ago, unlike LeLbow, who had it bothering him while no diagnosis could find any issue.
When have I shown an inability to be objective about Kobe? The guy is a great player, but a number of objective measures point to him not being the best player in the league. In fact, only subjective assessments of his "clutchness" or his "will to win" or team accomplishments (how can this be objectively calibrated to determine individual greatness?) are ever used by anyone trying to claim he is the best player in the game.
you're pretty objective. we all agree kobe is an all-timer, but he's not the best player in the L. why can't people just accept that? he's still a top 3-4 player.
Because he just won back2back final MVP, it's hard to argue against that. Name the last player who won b2b final MVP and was not best player in the league? You are making ridiculous comments and talking yourself into believing it.
that's MVP for the finals. we're talking best player for reg. season plus playoffs, not for a stretch. what don't you get about that? a finals is SEVEN games. you cannot justify the best player status based on freakin' 7 games or a few months. the best player is CONSISTENTLY good month in and month out. that's not kobe the past few years. if kobe can play like the way he is playing now for the ENTIRE reg. season without any inconsistent months AND playoffs, he will be back in my top player ranking. paul pierce won a finals MVP, was he the best player THAT YEAR? or just that finals? common sense. use it.
Winning one Final MVP can be a fluke, there's only a few players did b2b, all are all time great. If you want to talk about best player in regular season, you can give that to LeBron for last 2 years and I don't disagree. Without that context, best player thrives in playoff, not regular season.
i know! what was up with all the passing?? he needs to be more aggressive and score lots more points! he has definitely declined...
I know this won't be popular around here, but I'll say it: Hakeem Olajuwon. He won back-to-back Finals MVP awards, but he was not better than MJ. And you yourself have argued that Kobe was just as good if not better than Shaq by 2002 or 2003, when Shaq was coming off three straight Finals MVPs.
Kobe is better than Shaq but he was/is not more dominant than Shaq was. there's a difference. even Hack-a-Shaq couldn't hold Shaq down.
Kobe is better than Shaq now. That's about it. At their peaks, he wasn't close. Career as a whole, he's not close.
Nice ranking. I'd probably go: 1) LBJ 2) Kobe 3) Cp3 4)Howard 5)Durant/Wade -Howard is actually starting to remind me of Hakeem. Amazing player being brought down by crap teammates.
kobe was more skilled than Shaq. but Shaq could carry a team. that's what I mean by dominance. a good big man will almost always trump a good guard. Even in the case of MJ's Bulls. Hakeem's Rox won most of those contests. i'm not arguing against your point at all.
I agree that Kobe is more skilled than Shaq. AI is probably more skilled than Kobe (for a 5'10 guy to dominate for a period of time is amazing). Problem is, size is a big part of the game.
that should be the only thing that reminds you of hakeem from howard. although his offense has improved, he's still nowhere in hakeem's class offensively. i'm surprised you put wade that low. he's arguably the 2nd most efficient offensive player after lebron. but your list is not bad either.
