Ok, I’m hearing more and more lately about Kobe Bryant. He’s a great player. A stellar player. But as good as Jordan?
Am I just blinded by His Airness? I mean, I am firmly convinced that MJ is the greatest ever. Bar none. Better than Russell, better than Kareem, better than Bird, better than Earving, better than Magic, better than Isiah, better than Chamberlain. Just . . . better.
. . . isn’t he?
This season, his fifth, Kobe’s putting up 28.5 ppg. He’s shooting 46.4% from the floor.
In Jordan’s 5th season, 1988-89, he shot 53.8% averaging 32.5 points per game.
I know it ain’t all points, but damn . . . that’s a noticable difference.
Jordan averaged 8 rebounds per game. Kobe’s got 6. Jordan had 8 assists per game. Kobe has 5.
So . . . upon what basis are folks claiming that Bryant is Jordan’s equal?
I heard Barkley say Kobe is better now than Jordan was at that age (2?).
The stats you put up tell another story based on 5th seasons and I don’t think ages could be that far off.
Could be that the NBA and fans just need another “Jordan”.
Of course, Kobe was 18 when he came into the league, and I believe Michael was 21. Kobe also is scoring 28.5 points on a championship team with another MVP type player. Michael was playing for a good team and was the only star.
By the way, no one was as dominant as Chamberlain.
Well, his steps toward being recognized as the “second coming” got a little better recently according to last week’s Newsweek article.
Kobe supposedly got a wake-up call about his lack of team play when he was down for a while with an ankle injury - and the team played BETTER without him! According to the article, Kobe’s attitude has improved, and the Lakers are playing better now that he actually passes the ball once in a while.
Jordan was always a team player, and Kobe needs to move in that direction to rightfully become his heir.
Probably. Which is frustrating to me. I know we want superstars and all, but why diminish Jordan’s acheivements?
Texas Spur:
True enough. Obviously stats don’t tell the whole story. Would Kobe be scoring more without O’Neill? Maybe. Would the Lakers be a championship team? I really don’t think so.
Dominant? Of course not. Chamberlain was God incarnate. I cannot imagine anyone even coming close to his 70-point games, let alone his 100 pointer–not with current rules and the current caliber of play.
But was he a better player than Jordan? I say no.
Grok:
Agreed, wholeheartedly. Reckon that’s Dean Smith’s influence?
Pathros:
Well, he’s one of the three most commonly proposed (along with Kobe and Vince Carter) as “heir.” But again, Iverson is a fantastic player who’s just not the all-around talent Jordan was.
One thing that surprises me when this topic comes up is how people talk about Kobe not being a team player while Jordan was.
Perhaps you don’t remember, but early in his career the big criticism of Jordan was that he WASN’T a team player. You’d hear analysts talk all the time about how it was all well and good for Jordan to score 30+ points per game but that he would never be a truly great player (and the Bulls a really successful team) until he learned to be more of a team player.
I don’t argue the fact that Jordan became that type of player - just look at the difference in Scottie Pippen playing with Jordan vs. without Jordan, or the quick pass to Paxson to let him take the shot that won a championship - but it took a while. Five years into his career I’m sure he was still seen as a me-first player, so leveling the same criticism at Kobe strikes me as silly. If in five more years Kobe hasn’t become a team player, that’s a different story.
I think the difference in the makeup of the teams makes comparisons based on stats very difficult as well. Particularily at the start Jordan was pretty much it for the Bulls, and everybody knew it, so he was consistently double or even triple-teamed. That makes his scoring average even more impressive.
Kobe has Shaq so teams can’t just concentrate on Kobe or Shaq will kill them, so you could certainly make the arguement that it’s much easier for Kobe to score and therefore his scoring average doesn’t mean as much. On the other hand, with Shaq on the team Kobe doesn’t need to score as much, and maybe if Kobe were the sole focus of the offense he would be scoring 40 points a night. There’s no way to know.
So I’m still in wait-and-see mode. Wait another 10 years and we’ll have some idea of just how good Kobe is. In the mean time, even though I won’t argue with Chamberlain being the most dominant player ever, my first pick is always going to be Jordan. In addition to all the offensive fireworks he was an outstanding defender (don’t forget he won the scoring title and defensive player of the year in the same year once) and above all had a will to win that’s borderline neurotic. With the game on the line there’s nobody else I’d rather have handling the ball.
If I had first pick, I’d take Chamberlain over Jordan. In fact, I would always take a dominant center over a dominant shooting guard. In order of preference, I would take probably center, then point guard, then shooting guard, then power forward, then small forward. I would take Magic Johnson over Jordan also.
I really don’t think that Jordan is the greatest player. He is simply the best player of our era. In 15 years if Kobe has won 6 championships and at least 1 without Shaq, I will have no problem calling them equal players. Chamberlain in his prime had no one even close to him. Chamberlain was as dominant then as Shaq would be if he was 7’5’’, 390 pounds and just as quick and athletic as he is now. Not only did he average 50.4 points for a season, but he had 27.2 rebounds per game in 1960. He was also a pretty good passer and even averaged 8.6 assists in 67.
I agree that pure statistics can be misleading due to the nature of a team sport.
I think it is obvious that Kobe has modeled his game after Jordan’s. What kid his age wouldn’t? It’s amazing to me that someone his age can even hold his own in a comparison against Michael.
I like to draw comparisons based on seeing them in person. TV is fine, but there is a 3rd dimension added at a live event that makes it all the more real. I saw Jordan about 9 years ago in Houston, and I saw Kobe this year versus Dallas. Some of what Michael did has faded with time in my memory, but Kobe definitely reminded me of Jordan. In particular, he made one move where he split two defenders, then drove to the hole and slammed over everyone. Now THAT was very Jordanesque, and the entire Dallas crowd “oohhed” and “ahhhed”, then applauded. Unfuckinbelieveable.
Comparing their individual skills versus age, I think Jordan had slightly better leaping ability, but Kobe has a marginally better jumpshot. Michael improved his jumper with age, in addition to his passing ability, and this is when he started winning championships. But Kobe is only about as old now as Jordan was as a rookie. Revisit this argument in ~5 years and we’ll have a better perspective.
But back to the OP. Kobe has to prove that he is as good as Iverson, much less compare himself with Jordan.
Another hijack, Russell can play and dominate any era of basketball. Chamberlain cannot do it as easily, especially today with the hack-a Shaq strategy.
Agreed. Obviously, one cannot use stats to dispositively settle who was a better player. (Assuming it’s possible to settle this at all.) Thae stats generally favor Jordan, but Jordan had the advantage of having a bigger role on his team AND had a fairly significant age advantage, in comparing both players’ second/third/fourth seasons. I don’t know if it’s possible to zero out the biases. My opinion is that so far, Jordan is more dominant, but Kobe might have a chance to pass him, depending how he fleshes out his game. (I personally don’t see him scoring like Jordan unless he or Shaq leaves the Lakers, so he’ll have to round out his game more)
Yep. For these reasons, I lean towards Chamberlain being more dominant than Jordan. Hesistantly. I’d like to see MJ lead the league in rebounding or blocked shots (which weren’t always kept during Chamberlain’s time, but you know he–and Bill Russell–had to be one of the leaders) like Chamberlain led in assists.
Well, after game 1 last night in LA, I’d say Kobe got showed up by Iverson! This thread has taken a turn!
Watching these guys play is truly remarkable, BUT…
Kobe is GOOD. Iverson is BETTER. But comparing these players to Jordan? No. The only way you can fairly compare players is by how much they dominate their peers - and Jordan was head and shoulders above the rest(figuratively speaking of course.)
For example, in football, the Packers of the '60’s, who are thought of as one of the best all-time teams would get there ass kicked by ANY NFL team today; that’s just the way it is… it’s all about comparing peers.
I know that in basketball it’s a little different, but in a couple years if these young guys are still outperforming their contemporaries and still pulling away from them, then we can start comparing.
Just to add some fuel to the fire here, let’s look at Kobe’s stats in the first game of the finals:
15 points
5 assists
3 rebounds
6 turnovers
Just for fun I went back and looked at Jordan’s stats in finals games and built a composite “worst game” for each series. In other words, for each final series I took his worst performance in any of the games and combined them into one bad game (so fewest points in game 3, fewest rebounds in game 5, etc.).
The absolute worst “game” I could build for Jordan in this way would be from the 1998 finals, and looks like this:
It’s hard to compare of course (do 9 more points make up for 4 fewer assists?) but at best this is a wash. And keep in mind this is a composite game for Jordan - in game 1 when he only had 1 assist he had 45 points.
So my point is Jordan went to the finals 6 times and played in 35 games, and the worst composite game you can build in any of those 6 series for him is still better than what Kobe managed last night.
The comparison is even more unfavorable if you look at a younger Jordan, one closer to Kobe’s current age. For instance in the 1993 finals the worst composite game for Jordan looks like this:
Does this prove anything (other than I have way too much time on my hands)? Of course not. But when it comes to the finals it’s easy to say that Kobe is not the next Michael, at least not yet.
Allen Iverson is brilliant - no doubt about it. But he’s nowhere near the team player Jordan was and Kobe has become. Maybe he doesn’t have the depth on his team to back him up, though.
Kobe has his own style and has matured quite a bit IMO. He’s more versatile than Shaq (what the fuck is up with those free throws? And I get sick of that storm the key with his shoulder and shoot bit, though it seems to get the job done) and is becoming more well-rounded with time. He’s great on defense and with assists, too. He’s also a showman who is fun to watch.
One thing he and Jordan have in common, speaking from a heterosexual female perspective, is that I wouldn’t kick either of them out of bed for eating crackers. With sardines, even.