Against my better judgement* …
Posted: June 18th, 2008 | Filed under: Other Sports | 50 Comments »
Several people have commented and emailed about wanting something a little more concrete to look at when comparing Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Of course, I would rather not to do that because offering concrete things like statistics is almost like acknowledging that there is a reasonable comparison to be made. And there isn’t.
But everyone knows that we love stats here and so, via Basketball Reference, here are a few things to consider.
Kobe Bryant Win Shares Per 82-game season: 35.
Michael Jordan Win Shares Per 82-game season: 46.
OK, well that’s a blowout. So look, I don’t really know what goes into NBA Win Shares. You can read about them here. They incorporate offense and defense. Michael Jordan led the NBA in Win Shares eight times, and had more than 40 ten times. Kobe Bryant has led the NBA in Win Shares precisely zero times, and had more than 40 once (though he did have exactly 40 twice). Kobe’s career high in Win Shares is 45. Michael’s career high in Win Shares is 59 (twice).
Anyway, that’s not close.
* * *
Kobe Bryant’s Player Efficiency Rating (PER): 23.6.
Michael Jordan’s Player Efficiency Rating: 27.9.
I don’t really know what goes into PER either — ESPN columnist John Hollinger worked out some system that supposedly gives a players points for his positive contributions, takes points away for his negatives … Jordan’s PER is the best of all time. Kobe’s is awfully good … it’s 17th best. But that’s, like, a lot lower. Jordan also has seven of the Top 20 PER seasons ever — all seven led the NBA. Kobe’s best PER season is 46th — and he’s never had a league leading total.
Anyway, that’s not close.
* * *
Kobe Bryant’s Defensive Rating: 105.
Michael Jordan’s Defensive Rating: 103.
Kobe Bryant’s Offensive Rating: 112.
Michael Jordan’s Offensive Rating: 118.
Here are more advanced statistics that I don’t full understand. These were built around the work of author Dean Oliver. I guess the defensive rating is supposed to represent the number of points allowed per 100 possessions. Jordan’s quite a bit better. His offensive rating, which represents points scored per 100 possessions, meanwhile, destroys Kobe’s. Jordan’s 118 ranks 13th all-time (well, going back to 1977-78). Kobe’s 112 places him 94th.
Again, not trying to make this sound like the end-all, be all statistic but … anyway, that’s not close.
* * *
Kobe Bryant’s basic numbers over his first 12 years: 24.9 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 45.4% FG, 83.9% FT, 1.5 steals, .6 blocks, 2.9 turnovers, led league in points per game twice, 10-time All Star, 1 MVP.
Michael Jordan’s basic numbers over his first 12 years: 31.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.6 assists, 50.9% FG, 84.3%, 2.6 steals, .9 blocks, 2.8 turnovers, led league in points per game nine times, in steals three times times, 11-time All Star, 4 MVPs.
Much easier numbers to understand, and, yeah, not close either.
* * *
Kobe Bryant’s basic playoff numbers (152 games): 24.3 points, 5 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 44.5% FG, 79.8% FT, 1.4 steals, .7 blocks, 0 Finals MVPs.
Michael Jordan’s basic playoff number (179 games): 33.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.7 assists, 48.7% FG, 82.8% FT, 2.1 steals, .9 blocks, 6 Finals MVPs.
Seriously, why are we having this conversation again? Oh, that’s right. We’re not.
*It’s crazy to think that nobody wants to just make a call on how to spell the word “judgement†(or, if you prefer, “judgmentâ€). Dictionaries seem to be in agreement … either spelling is fine, you can spell it either with the E or without the E, they don’t really care. See, that bothers me — if a DICTIONARY won’t make a call, who will? What is happening in our society? Some say that the British version is “judgement†while the American is “judgment,†which is equally annoying … we should be able to come to some sort of NATO agreement on this, no?
Well, frankly, we have to make a call here. It’s a clear-cut choice. We spell the word “engagement†with an E. So from this day forth … the only correct way to spell judgement is, well, judgement. Thank you.
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I agree. In my judgement this is a non-issue.
“filed under Baseball” That’s funny.
I think the only ones who are comparing Kobe and Jordan are kids who have never seen Jordan play and Mark Jackson. Now, kids are mostly dumb and think everything “now” is cooler than everything “way back when”. As far as Jackson – who knows where the hell that came from.
Before the Kobe-phytes jump in and say that Kobe’s stats were obviously down in the playoffs due in large part to his first few playoff runs when he deferred to Shaq, I would ask why his FG% is so very poor?
Playing with a guy like Shaq, who drew constant doubles (and occasional triples) would give Kobe his fair share of wide open shots.
For sure Kobe never had to deal with as many doubles and triple teams as Jordan did.
44.5% FG is absolutely terrible for someone considered to be the “best in the Game,” no?
Seriously, there is no argument. Who are these people saying Kobe is better, or even close? Are they all 12?
I’m with Mac- who are these people?
For the Record here are the Kobe – Lebron splits over the last 4 years (all stats are in order from the 2004-05 through 2007-08 seasons).
Win Shares:
LeBron had: 38, 48, 38, 43
Kobe had: 35, 40, 40, 39
Player Efficiency Rating:
LeBron: 25.7, 28.1, 24.5, 29.1
Kobe: 23.3, 28.0, 26.1, 24.2
Defensive Rating (lower is better):
LeBron: 103, 104, 100, 104
Kobe: 111, 105, 109, 105
Offensive Rating:
LeBron: 114, 115, 112, 116
Kobe: 111, 114, 115, 115
Season stats we all understand (averages per game over last 4 years):
LeBron: 29.0 points, 7.3 rebounds, 6.8 assists, 48.5% FG, 72.4% FT, 1.8 steals, 0.8 blocks
Awards: 4 time all-star, 2 time all-star game MVP, 2 time All-NBA 1st tean, 2 time All-NBA 2nd team
Kobe: 30.7 points, 5.8 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 45.2% FG, 84.5% FT, 1.3 steals, 0.5 blocks
Awards: 4 time all-star, 1 all-star game MVP, 1 season MVP, 3 time All-NBA 1st team, 1 All-NBA 3rd team, 3 time All-Defensive 1st team
Playoffs (average per game over last 3 seasons because both teams missed 04-05 playoffs):
LeBron: 27.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, 7.3 assists, 43.3% FG, 74.2% FT, 1.6 steals, 0.8 blocks
Results: 2nd round and lost, NBA Finals and lost, 2nd round and lost
Kobe: 30.1 points, 5.7 rebounds, 5.3 assists, 48.0% FG, 81.7% FT, 1.5 steals, 0.4 blocks
Results: 1st round and lost, 1st round and loss, NBA Finals and lost
Now… you tell me, which argument makes more sense? Kobe vs. Jordan or Kobe vs. LeBron?
judgment.
dictionaries present a bastardized form of the language. soon, they will be vague on whether its nuclear or nucular, supposedly or supposably, and develop or develope.
The one that always gets me is travelling. That’s the way that I like to spell it – and I think it is the British version, but spell check always insists on traveling.
Yes, but you still haven’t explained why Lincoln was a more significant American than John Can(a)d(a)y.
I’ve been infuriated with the barrage of “Kobe ain’t no MJ” articles in the media the last few days. Objective, knowledgeable fans, even Laker fans, do not make the comparison. It’s a great amount of sports writers and TV personalities that have constantly made that comparison, and now decide to tear him up after an embarrassing Finals. If you watch Bryant’s interviews, it seems clear that he knows he doesn’t really compare either, but it goes on.
Joe, none of the stats you posted are incorrrect. But, let’s also put a little context in it. Jordan was a phenom coming out of North Carolina, played his rookie season as a 21 year old, and basically started every game of his career. He averaged over 38 minutes a game as a rookie. Kobe was a high school phenom playing his rookie year at 18, and averaged less than 16 minutes a game. The next season, he averaged 26 minutes a game. If you recall, that was the year when the media started hyping Kobe as the next MJ, and Kobe was an All Star despite not starting on his own team.
Those first two seasons are on Kobe’s resume, that’s for sure. But using that as part of Kobe’s per game career stat line, those seasons disproportionately deflate his stats. If you take away those two seasons, his career 27.7 ppg, 5.1 apg, 5.9 rpg. No, that’s not MJ good, but sudddenly he separates himself from the likes of Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and so on. Of course, even without those first two seasons, he is still sharing the ball with a dominant Shaq, who probably made Kobe’s life as a star easier, but made it less easy to compile big time stats.
Context is not just important in per game averages, but also FG percentages. Just as a high batting average doesn’t necessarily mean a tremendous high OBP, FG% alone now isn’t viewed as the holy grail in measuring a player’s shooting efficiency. EffectiveFG% and TrueShooting% take into account of 3 point shots and 3 point shots + free throws, and has generally been recognized to be a more worthwhile way of measuring shooting efficiency. MJ’s 50.9% FG over Kobe’s 44.5% edge is gigantic, but the gap is smaller with these two metrics:
MJ 50.9 eFG%, 56.9 TS%
KB 48.6 eFG%, 55.7 TS%
These percentages also don’t take into account of league performance of shooting and pace factors. Think OPS vs. OPS+. E.g., at ages 29, MJ’s league shot 47.3% and averaged 105.3 ppg, Kobe’s league shot 45.7% and scored 99.9 ppg. Of course, relative to league performance, Jordan IS better, but it’s not too helpful to simply post percentage points. That is where PER and offensive rating can help us, because they are pace neutral metrics; PER is also a metric that measures against league performance.
As you can probably tell, I am a Laker and Kobe fan. I don’t think it’s his great failing to not be MJ–there are other more important issues–and it’s pretty clear to me that he won’t ever catch MJ. But, Kobe could go down as one of the top 15 players ever, and likely the second greatest shooting guard of all time. Obviously many don’t like Kobe, but recognize too that he is greatness. It’s not his fault that it’s like a shortstop chasing the legacy of Honus Wagner.
As a Laker fan, although not diehard by any stretch, I have to agree with Kirk; the media (and not the LA media for the most part) are the ones playing this up because they need to be controversial. Kobe is not as good as Jordan. Period. He’s just not. If he was, the Lakers would have won that series.
But again, I’ll echo Kirk’s sentiments, I don’t think Laker fans want him to try to be MJ. As evidenced by the Lakers great stretch run this year, Kobe is at his best when he gets his team involved early, encourages them, and carries them on his back only when he needs to. During this series, he started getting into the crap that people have criticized him heavily for the last couple seasons – he barked at teammates and everyone tensed up. I would guess that that personality trait never went away, but he was able to hide it well during a relatively smooth regular season and WC playoff run.
Jordan would have just taken over the series and his teammates wouldn’t have cared because they knew they would get a ring out of it. Kobe isn’t good enough to do that.
I know very little about basketball, and Kone vs MJ is silly, but don’t some people who actually do know something argue that Shaq was better than Jordan?
Dude, comparing Shaq to MJ is like comparing apples to Geo Metros, really no comparison at all, and a completely irrelevant argument
For anyone who cares, orating is an estimate of points per possession based on fg’s, fga’s, orbs, ft’s, etc. and this makes sense and is a good statistic, but it should always be presented alongside usg% (which is an estimate of the percentage of possessions used while on the floor, this is important because efficiency in very small amounts isn’t as helpful as in large amounts and using a low volume of possessions results in a decrease in efficiency of teammates). Defensive rating and PER are, in my opinion, not very good statistics. Defensive rating is simply your team’s defensive rating, but gives bonuses for steals, blocks, and defensive rebounds. It grossly overvalues defensive rebounding (http://www.countthebasket.com/blog/2008/02/23/more-diminishing-returns/) due to diminishing returns and doesn’t consider a player’s ability to make his opponent miss. PER almost makes sense, but it doesn’t. You can go to basketball-reference and read the exact formula if you need proof.
Sorry Joe. The first thing I learned in law school was that there’s no “e” in “judgment.” I can’t get on board.
Also, it’s worth noting that with the exception of your occasional ex-player who probably has no business commenting on basketball games, let alone getting paid for it, 99% of the talk out there is about how Kobe is NOT Jordan. I’ve heard that so many times the Jordan-Kobe comparison has almost become a straw man argument. No one’s claiming that Kobe is Jordan. Kobe’s certainly never claimed that. The closest he’s come are some comments earlier in his career about how he patterned his offensive game after Jordan, which is fairly obvious (although it was more obvious when there were fewer players who…I could go on all day about this, so never mind). But in any event, it’s not an argument, and I don’t really think anyone’s claiming it is. Except the aforementioned numbskull.
To plagiarize an earlier post: Kobe – so overrated, he’s underrated.
Actually I don’t think a comparison of Shaq to MJ is irrelevant at all.
I don’t have the basketball stat chops to make the comparison but if any poster here does and cares to do it I think it would be really interesting.
The fact that it’s like comparing apples and geos is exactly what makes it worthwhile.
Yes, but you still haven’t explained why Lincoln was a more significant American than John Can(a)d(a)y.
Simple. Lincoln was taller.
Joe,
We fought a Revolution to keep that “e” out of “judgment,” so don’t you go converting on us. Shortly after the Revolution, Noah Webster created his speller that was to rescue American English from the “clamor of pedantry” that is English English. He’s the one responsible for Americans spelling center instead of centre, color instead of colour, and traveling instead of travelling. I’m not sure about his spelling of judgment, but he probably did that one too.
My favorite example of this conscious divide between things British and American is that during the American Revolution patriotic Americans changed the name of their favorite bug. The British called them fireflies. Americans honoring their inventor/statesman, Ben Franklin, called them lightning bugs. The British were in the stone age, while Americans were on the cutting edge of discovery. Small changes like this helped people believe that there was a distinct “Americaness” completely different from the old British aristocratic life. So drop that “e” with pride!
Matt G.
“The first thing I learned in law school was that there’s no “e†in “judgment.†”
That’s the first thing you learned? What’s that letter between the m and the n?
Andy,
I was just having this discussion with my wife about firefly v. lightning bug. I grew up calling them lightning bugs and somewhere later in life inherited this firefly thing. I’m glad to know that piece of history.
Thanks for the information.
Joe,
I used to think like you do about language. That it is static, unchanging. But that judgEment is flawed. Languages around the world have evolved since the first word was spoken. New words are added all the time, and meanings are changed for slang. If the people will it to be so, then a word can even change its spelling. This is where the dictionary comes in. It reports on the usage of words and how they are spelled by the majority of people. So judgEment is acceptable either way. Just remember spelling potato “potatoE” is bad, even though the dictionary says it is ok. Dan Quayle learned that lesson the hard way, or maybe we just didn’t like him. Yeah, it was probably the latter.
Shaq isn’t even the dominant big man of this era. I would say he merits less of a comparison than Kobe, except neither merits any.
Lincoln was awesome in that one-on-one match-up with Sherman Douglas. They’ve been talking about that ever since.
Defensive Rating (lower is better):
LeBron: 103, 104, 100, 104
Kobe: 111, 105, 109, 105
This alone tells me this stat is completely and utterly worthless. Lebron is not even close to as good a defender as Kobe. It’s almost as bad as saying Kobe is better than Jordan. That stat must be HEAVILY team-dependent.
All court documents spell it “judgment.” Case closed.
“Shaq isn’t even the dominant big man of this era.”
Seriously? You want to go on record with this?
“Judgment” is best; it saves a finger-stroke. Re “engagement”: “gag” is enough of a word so that “engag” might reasonably mean something like “to embroider with gags” (which’ll, I guess, put you in stitches); “judg,” on the other hand, is gibberish by itself, needing its fossilized middle-English-remnant silent-e to make sense.
And that’s my judgement.
The correct spelling of judgment was pounded into our heads on just about the first day of law school. The other way just looks terrible to my eye, but then again, I’ve been indoctrinated.
I am assuming that all of these numbers include Jordan’s two crap-tastic years in Washington (??) and who knows what his numbers would have been if he didn’t take those two years off IN HIS PRIME to play baseball.
Yeah…
Kobe doesn’t even COMPARE, and to his credit, I recall that even HE doesn’t want to hear any of that talk either.
Let me add this – if you were to take every Laker but Kobe and swap those men with every Cavalier but LeBron, what do you think the result would be?
Would the Celtics have won the East? Would the Lakers have won the West?
I just don’t get the whole “Best Basketball Player on the Planet” label with Kobe Bryant. Basketball is a team game, and Kobe Bryant is a bad teammate.
LeBron James, Derek Fisher, Lamar Odom, Pau Gasol, Sasha Vujacic.
or
Kobe Bryant, Ben Wallace, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Wally Szczerbiak, Delonte West.
I’d take the LeBron crew… the Cavs actually outscored the Celtics over the 7 game series in total points, give LeBron a better supporting cast and I think that puts him over the edge
Also, one of the big LeBron myths out there is that he doesn’t play good defense… people criticized him for his defense his first couple years in the league because he looked disinterested but since then he’s been a strong defender. He is a very good weak side shot blocker and he is too big and fast for most people (including Kobe in the games he has played against LeBron to date) to drive around or shoot over.
Most dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive, especially Webster’s and the OED. Bryan Garner’s _Modern American Usage_ is a great guide for this kind of thing, and yes, he does specify that “judgment” is AmE and used in British legal texts while “judgement” is the non-legal-context British way of doing things.
The list of animal adjectives is really wonderful, too. “Lumbricine”! “Scolopendrine”! “Struthionine”!
I would guess that Curtis is talking about either Olajuwon (a great player of a slightly prior generation, who beat Shaq head-to-head in the Finals) or Duncan (a great player of a slightly later generation, who has gotten the better of Shaq more often than not, though they don’t normally go head-to-head). I would take either ahead of Shaq but I don’t think it’s as cut-and-dried as MJ/Kobe, and neither is really a direct competitor as their prime seasons don’t overlap.
What is the judgment(?) on “canceled” v. “cancelled?” I prefer two l’s, but is that unpatriotic if “cancelled” is the British spelling?
Yeah, to make it clear, Duncan is superior to Shaq.
This may harken back to one of Joe’s previous comments about Brett and Schmidt where he basically said, I don’t care what the statistics say, I will always think Brett is the better player.
If the statistics don’t demonstrate conclusively that Duncan is better than Shaq – and I am not a close follower of the basketball sabermetrics – then all that would prove is that basketball sabermetrics have a long way to go. (Which is probably true since basketball is so much more fluid while baseball is built upon hundreds and hundreds of one-on-one confrontations.)
Give me Hakeem, too, above Shaq, but when I wrote the first one I was talking about Duncan.
I think part of what drives the Kobe Jordan debate is the fact that both players played well on good teams in large media markets. Kobe obviously gets alot of media attention. Jordan probably got the most of them all.
With that said, this amount of attention probably makes impressionable minds (such as those infamous 12 year old kids at the playground) think that Kobe and Jordan get all of this attention because they’re equally good. If memory serves, Jordan commercials were like highlight reels (Mc Donald’s, Nike, Gatorade, etc.) And Kobe’s commercials were similar (Addidas, Sprite, etc.). Similarly, Kobe and Jordan essentially play(ed) the same position/role on their respective teams.
These factors invite comparison. But, I think the comparisions are more about comparing two guys who have been marketed to us as equals as opposed to two guys who have performed equally great.
In other news I’ve learned the hard way that judgment is spelled without the “e.” But what should we do about the past tense of “to plead?” Should it be plead (like the past tense of read), pled (like the past tense of lead) or pleaded (like the past tense of knead)?
Aaron M -
It’s not that VP Quayle spelled it with an e. It’s that he corrected a 6th grader who’d spelled it correctly “potato” in a spelling bee.
At least one lexicographer says dictionaries aren’t about defining what is/isn’t a word. Check this awesome TED talk:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161
I can’t stand Kobe, mostly because I believe he raped that girl in Colorado and got away w/it. (I also believe O.J. killed Nicole and Ron, btw). For that simple fact alone I could never include him in a discussion about MJ and greatness. Michael might have been a gambler and a philanderer, but he’s no rapist.
Lightning bugs vs. Fireflies?
Along those lines, when did it change from “breakfast/dinner/supper” to “breakfast/lunch/dinner”? Doesn’t seem right.
The AP Stylebook also rules it as judgment.
i had absolutely NO idea that judgement is spelled with no ‘e’. then again, i have not written that word in probably half a decade.
It’s not just the Media that’s bleating the “Kobe is as good as / better than MJ!”
It’s a LOT of idiot fans too. Love the work Joe, hopefully this argument is now forever closed.
My Nazi work firewall guys have now blocked all ESPN chat archives, otherwise I’d search for the John Hollinger chat in which he absolutely DESTROYED the ‘argument’ in two simple paragraphs by using a few statistics.
“Shaq isn’t even the dominant big man of this era”
Que?
“Yeah, to make it clear, Duncan is superior to Shaq.”
Tim Duncan is one of the ten best Power Forwards in the game, all time.
Shaq is one of the ten best Centers in the game, all time.
It’s a bit hard to compare them, in my opinion, as they play positions that often are called interchangeable, but are quite different.
Has Duncan “Gotten the better of Shaq” on many occasions? Undoubtedly. Duncan is also 8 years younger than Shaq. Think that might have something to do with it?
Also, in his absolute prime years, Shaq DESTROYED Tim Duncan in the playoffs.
Hakeem Olajuwon is possibly better than Shaq, but they played like 12 years apart. Not really an apt comparison.
Kobe is flat out awesome.
Mike is flat out awesome’er.
There may be aspects of their games where Kobe is better, but come on. Overall? They’re pretty easy to compare, and Jordan was… well, Jordan. I find it much more difficult to compare Jordan to players like Magic or Wilt, where their roles were vastly different.
I love this blog, but I hate this post.
Why? Because the “Old Man Joy” post before it said everything that needed to be said on this whole issue, Joe nailed it. Kobe was horrible in Game 6, and one lesson to draw then from Game 6 was that Kobe does not equal MJ–it’s not even a discussion point.
And then two days later–we get a blog post comparing Kobe to MJ using a bunch of different statistical metrics. WTF? While he’s at it, maybe Joe can break out statistics to prove other truths that everybody knows already. Is Paul Pierce really better than Vlad Radmanovich? Joe?
I find the “Kobe is as good as/better than Jordan” argument so ridiculous — verging on a special form of mental retardation — that I find myself rooting for Kobe to fail miserably just so his delusional band of Mamba worshippers will be forever shamed into silence. But they will never shut up — because the Kobe cultists are impervious to logic, common sense, empirical data and rational thought. So, despite Kobe’s abysmal performance against the Celtics (and the Pistons in 2004, and his infamous Game 7 disappearing act against the Suns), next season when his apologists’ collective memory loss sets in and Kobe scores 50 points in the regular season opener — the Jordan comparisons will start anew.
There are a few sub-issues in this non-debate debate that I wanted to address. First, it is not true (though I wish it were) that only a few misguided souls have jumped on the “Kobe is Jordan” bandwagon. I’ve heard variations on this theme from supposedly intelligent commentators like Dan Patrick, Rick Reilly (who’s always had some kind of weird vendetta against Jordan), Colin Blowhard, er, Cowherd, Norman Chad, Sam Smith; from ex-players other than the frontally lobotomized Mark Jackson, including Kenny Smith, Kenny Anderson, Brent Barry and John Salley. So, this idiocy is not limited to the lunatic fringe (or, rather, the lunatic fringe is far more populous than we thought.)
These people must be shamed, ridiculed and scorned. There has not been nearly enough public humiliation of the Kobe-philes. Their opinions on any basketball related matters can never be taken seriously. They’re like the kooks who think Neil Armstrong landed on a sound stage; they’re like the people who insist 9/11 was an inside job; they’re like someone who insists that Shelly Smith is hotter than Erin Andrews. They have proven themselves to be in a persistent vegetative state and their opinions are to be given the consideration due to those with no discernible brain activity. If Mark Jackson ever utters the words “Jordan” and “Kobe” in the same sentence again, he should be repeatedly tazered on live television and then forced to do the rest of the broadcast with one of Charles Oakley’s rancid jock straps wadded in his mouth. (By the way, I’m sure everyone remembers the famous Jordan dunk at MSG where he gets out on the break, takes the lob from Sam Vincent and crams it two handed on, yes, Mark Jackson’s head while all the Knicks fans in the back ground leap for joy at what they’ve just seen. My theory is that for some players-turned-commentators like Jackson, who Jordan routinely tortured and emasculated on the court, opining that Kobe is as good as his Airness is a form of petty revenge.)
However, arguably worse than the Kobe koolaid brigade — and what vexes me greatly enough to make me rend my garments — are the purported Jordan defenders who offer this kind of lukewarm, retch-inducing support: “Well, Jordan is still the greatest player ever because of his leadership and intangibles, but Kobe is a better shooter and is more gifted/talented/athletic.”
Huh?! Are you %$&! insane! Wrong! Wrong! A thousand times Wrong!
The early Jordan (‘84-’93) — aka ‘Come Fly with Me’ Mike — was the most explosive, vicious attacker of the rim in the history of the league. Kobe’s athletic ability — in terms of both levitation, burst off the dribble and lateral quickness — are a B minus Jordan. Which is why he found himself taking and mostly bricking fall away 19 footers against the Celtics defense. Look, taking nothing away from Paul Pierce’s valiant defensive efforts on Kobe, but the ‘Truth’ would have had as much chance of impeding vintage Jordan as a tree sloth impaled on a cement post. One shudders to think what kind of stupefying offensive binges Jordan would have gone on in a no-hand check league.
And let’s dispense with this related lie from the Land of the Stupids that Kobe is the better shooter. The relevant shooting percentages alone show this to be patently absurd (from 87 thru 92 — Jordan averaged an astonishing 52% from the field, against defenses that were permitted to inflict blunt head trauma on those foolish enough to venture into the paint). But the stats don’t get at the real difference. If Kobe and Jordan stood in an empty gym and had a three point shooting contest, I have little doubt that Kobe would win. But shooting at the NBA level is not primarily about “range” or winning at “horse” — it’s about being able to get the shots you want while under extreme duress. David Halberstam, in his marvelous book about Jordan, commented that while Jordan was not as skilled a pure shooter as bombers like Reggie Miller and Larry Bird, Jordan was perhaps the best shooter under “combat conditions.” That’s exactly right: when facing rugged, play off defenses geared entirely to stop him, Jordan was still able to get any shot he wanted. Kobe, as we’ve just witnessed, lacks the ability to impose his offensive will on a great, cohesive defense.
I’m not a Kobe hater. He may very well go down as the second best shooting guard to ever play. But these foolish, baseless comparisons with the G.O.A.T really must stop.
Because we all know that Harold Minor was the true Air Apparent.
Only a Joe blog can have me thinking of Lewis Carrol playing one-on-one against Kobe as they argue about the correct spelling of judgement.
Apples and oranges. Jordan was the original, Kobe is just a watered-down, remake. Jordan is the greatest ever. Some other hack at basketball.lifetips.com actually blogged that Jordan was overrated. R U INSANE?!!