(07-25-2024, 11:37 AM)dirkfansince1998 Wrote: Great player. But that's obviously not all that matters. Style and marketabilty are just as important. Add a tragic death and you have a larger than life idol.
Kobe was good. But never the best player in the league. Great volume scorer. Not the most efficient one. I think compared to his peers he is overrated.
AI is another good example. Had no business winning an MVP award over Duncan and Shaq but he was one of the most popular players of all time. Living legend because he shot 40% from midrange after a crossover. A 7ft guy shooting 50% from the same distance with a weird looking fadeaway is going to win you more games but he isn't going to sell more jerseys.
Well, I honestly think Kobe could average 35-40 PPG today if he wanted to and was playing like he did between 2000-01 to 2007-08, when he was in his athletic prime, because of how different the game is compared to that time.
The rules in the early 2000s were very conducive to teams being able to play the most stifling defense, which was an environment that allowed the best 1-on-1 players to shine on their own merit (i.e., without help from rule changes or from gifted spacing). It's only because of subsequent rule changes that lesser talented players have also been able to shine as brightly.
Imagine Kobe in a team that was perfectly constructed around him, with defenders and spacing. For example:
- Billups or Kidd, Kobe, Shane Battier, Rasheed Wallace or Shawn Marion, Tyson Chandler
^ who's beating that team?
These are the kind of teams that MJ, Magic, Larry, Lebron, Duncan, Steph, etc have had.
Regarding efficiency... Kobe's career TS% (55.0%) is the same as Tim Duncan's (55.1%). Bigs are supposed to have higher TS%, being that more of their points come closer to the basket... and Kobe also took more shots to have the same TS%, higher volume should equal lower TS%. Yet you think of Duncan as efficient but not Kobe, why is that? Dirk's career TS% (57.7) is only 2.7% more than Kobe's too.